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He Feels Like The Teen's Parents Tricked Him Out Of His Seat.
We'd all love to think we are the kindest and most empathetic person on the planet, especially when it comes to kids. But there are times when you are tempted to put your own comfort ahead of a child's. One such instance is on a flight that you've booked and pre-selected your seats.
It's rather common for parents to ask fellow passengers to swap seats so they can sit with their kids. That's the scenario one man found himself in when catching a 14-hour flight with his wife. The man had booked his wife a window seat on an international flight while he took one for the team and sat next to her in the middle seat. "My laptop was loaded up with episodes from the show we were watching, we had our snacks all organized, etc.," he said.
The man was approached by a couple who frantically asked if he could swap seats with their child.According to the Redditor, who shared his story in the u/QuabityAsuance subreddit, he would have normally turned the distraught parents' demand down, but he empathetically considered the many possibilities of why the parents had been seated separately from their little girl. So, he agreed, gathered his belongings, and headed to his new seat, leaving his wife behind.
He was surprised to find that the vulnerable little girl he had imagined in his head was actually a "disinterested" 16-year-old mindlessly playing on her phone while her parents panicked about her being so far away from them.
Photo: Reddit
"She was literally taller than my wife," he said when describing just how independent the young lady should have been.
Losing his cozy spot next to his wife was nothing compared to what the bitter husband would endure for the entirety of the 14-hour flight. "I was moved to a seat next to a toddler who was kicking and screaming the whole flight," he explained.
On top of that, apparently, the teenager, now seated next to his wife, kept resting her pillow on the woman's shoulder.
Clearly, it was a very long flight. It seems that no good deed goes unpunished. It must have taken a lot of patience not to march up to the teen's parents and demand his original seat back.
Debates surrounding airplane etiquette are becoming increasingly common.When it comes to catching flights, what is or is not proper etiquette is a source of debate. People seemingly get more anxious when it's time to fly and are much less empathetic and impatient with each other.
It goes without saying that you should never plop down in another passenger's seat before they have boarded the airplane (though not everyone adheres to that obvious rule). But the question that often comes up is what to do when you are asked to swap seats with another passenger.
The most important thing to remember is that you are well within your rights to decline a seat swap. You paid for yours and everyone likely knew what they were getting in advance. It is not your duty to make other people more comfortable on their flight.
But an unspoken rule regarding seat swaps is that when requesting one, you should offer better or equivalent accommodations. For example, if you want an aisle seat, you should offer more legroom. Or if you are seated near a bathroom in the window seat, you might give it up for a middle seat far away from the toilet. The key is mutual respect. Only ask for a switch if absolutely necessary and don't get bent out of shape if you are turned down.
Seat swaps aren't the only drama airline passengers (and employees) face.You may have noticed a plethora of stories involving undesirable incidents on airplanes recently. People are threatening flight attendants, violating other passengers' space, refusing to consider the comfort of other flyers, and fighting their significant other over trivial things. Much of this can be attributed to increasing mental health issues like stress and anxiety.
Related Stories From YourTango:People are feeling much less sympathy for their fellow passengers and are unwilling to budge when it comes to compromising.
It seems that everyone could benefit from being less judgmental and much more empathetic.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington. She covers lifestyle, relationships, and human-interest stories that readers can relate to and that bring social issues to the forefront for discussion.
How A Junk Food Diet Caused Blindness In A Teen
A British teen's diet consisted of fries, Pringles, white bread, processed ham slices, and sausage.... [+] (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
GettyNot everyone may see the risks of a junk food diet. Here's a case of a British teen who had trouble seeing because he ate too much junk food and too little of anything else.
In the most recent issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, Rhys Harrison, Vicki Warburton, PhD, Andrew Lux, PhD, and Denize Atan, PhD from the University Hospitals Bristol in the UK told the story of a "fussy eater." The story began when the then-14-year-old "fussy eater" saw his family doc due to "tiredness." At the time, tests had indicated that he had low vitamin B12 and red blood cell levels (i.E., anemia).
Now you may say that your child is a "fussy eater" or that you are or were a "fussy eater" as a child. After all, up to nearly a quarter of kids (13% to 22%, according to a publication in the journal Eating Behaviors, for example) are reportedly "picky eaters." Ah, but there are different levels of "fussiness." There's a difference between not wanting to eat your Brussels sprout-asparagus-turnip casserole, and this teen's diet. Apparently, since elementary school, he had insisted on only eating foods that had "certain textures," which meant regularly eating French fries, Pringles potato chips, white bread, processed ham slices, and sausage. As you can see fries, Pringles, and white bread do not appear on the following list of vitamin B12-rich foods, provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
Food Micrograms (mcg)per serving Percent DV* Clams, cooked, 3 ounces 84.1 1,402 Liver, beef, cooked, 3 ounces 70.7 1,178 Nutritional yeasts, fortified with 100% of the DV for vitamin B12, 1 serving 6.0 100 Trout, rainbow, wild, cooked, 3 ounces 5.4 90 Salmon, sockeye, cooked, 3 ounces 4.8 80 Trout, rainbow, farmed, cooked, 3 ounces 3.5 58 Tuna fish, light, canned in water, 3 ounces 2.5 42 Cheeseburger, double patty and bun, 1 sandwich 2.1 35 Haddock, cooked, 3 ounces 1.8 30 Breakfast cereals, fortified with 25% of the DV for vitamin B12, 1 serving 1.5 25 Beef, top sirloin, broiled, 3 ounces 1.4 23 Milk, low-fat, 1 cup 1.2 18 Yogurt, fruit, low-fat, 8 ounces 1.1 18 Cheese, Swiss, 1 ounce 0.9 15 Beef taco, 1 soft taco 0.9 15 Ham, cured, roasted, 3 ounces 0.6 10 Egg, whole, hard boiled, 1 large 0.6 10 Chicken, breast meat, roasted, 3 ounces 0.3 5Therefore, the doctor recommended vitamin B12 injections and changing his diet. The goal was to help the teen reach the recommended daily allowances (RDA) for vitamin B12:
Age Male Female Pregnancy Lactation 0–6 months* 0.4 mcg 0.4 mcg 7–12 months* 0.5 mcg 0.5 mcg 1–3 years 0.9 mcg 0.9 mcg 4–8 years 1.2 mcg 1.2 mcg 9–13 years 1.8 mcg 1.8 mcg 14+ years 2.4 mcg 2.4 mcg 2.6 mcg 2.8 mcAssuming that he was not pregnant or lactating, the British male teen should have gotten at least 2.4 mcg of vitamin B12 each day. As you can see from the first table above, there are a number of options to satisfy this daily amount, especially if you clam up, so to speak.
Clams top the list of the NIH's vitamin B12-rich foods. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun via Getty... [+] Images)
GettyHowever, things didn't improve and instead got worse. At age 15, the teen started having difficulty hearing and visited an otolaryngologist. An exam, though, did not reveal the source of the problem. Soon thereafter, he began experiencing problems seeing as well, yet an eye exam by an ophthalmologist was normal.
But in Yoda-speak, normal, things were not. The teen's vision got progressively worse over the ensuing two years. Finally, at age 17, he underwent an exam by a neuro-ophthalmologist, which showed that the teen's vision in each eye had decreased to 20/200. If this visual loss could not be corrected, it would qualify for the definition of blindness provided by the American Foundation for the Blind: "A visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better-seeing eye with best conventional correction (meaning with regular glasses or contact lenses)."
The authors did use "blindness" in the case report's headline. Which read, "Blindness Caused by a Junk Food Diet." Plus, they reported that the teen had developed blind spots in both eyes and deterioration of the nerves in his retina, deficiencies that aren't readily correctable by glasses or contact lenses.
The following test results also caught the eye of the doctor: low level of Vitamin B12 as well as low copper, selenium, and Vitamin D. Of note, the teen's bone mineral density was also low for his age, which is not surprising given the low Vitamin D levels. His height (172.9 cm), weight (65.7 kg), and body mass index (BMI) were all within normal range, though.
It turns out that the teen had not been getting his Vitamin B12 injections and had basically maintained the same diet. In this segment of This Morning, one of the co-authors of the case report, Dr. Atan describes how not taking more aggressive corrective action sooner may have cost the teen a fair amount of his eyesight:
She emphasized that when one nutritional deficiency is detected, other nutritional deficiencies are likely present and levels should be checked. It isn't as if Pringles and white bread are just deficient in vitamin B12 but rich in everything else.
Not getting enough vitamin B1 (thiamine), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B3 (niacin), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), vitamin B9 (folate), vitamin B12 (cobalamin), or copper can lead to nutritional optic neuropathy. "Optic" means "of or relating to the eye or sight." The prefix "neuro" stands for nerve, and the suffix "-pathy" means refers to disease of that particular part of the body. Thus, "nutritional optic neuropathy" is when nutritional deficiencies lead to deterioration or a disease of the nerves that help you see.
His doctor then prescribed nutritional supplements and referred him to mental health services to address his eating issues. While the teen's vision subsequently did not get worse, it also did not improve, suggesting that this vision loss may unfortunately be permanent.
Losing eyesight due to nutritional deficiencies is probably still relatively rare in higher income countries. That's why this teen's story became a case report in a medical journal. Medical journals don't typically include very common occurrences as case reports. You don't usually see case reports entitled: "Teen Ate Too Many Potato Chips And Then Felt Like Garbage," or "Teen Consumed Many Cans of Chili, Farting And Diarrhea Resulted."
Nevertheless, this case is a reminder of why junk food is called junk food and not full-of-nutrients-food. Just because you eat something besides fries, Pringles, white bread, processed ham slices, and sausage, doesn't mean that you are in the clear. In fact, just because your weight and height remain in the normal ranges doesn't mean that junk food isn't harming your body. In other words, you can't always see what a junk food diet is doing to you.
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