If your sensibilities are a bit too delicate to stomach the idea of sending a mild electric current through your child’s body in order to save the price of another ticket to your destination, I have another idea that should suffice, and this is a lot of fun.
That’s right. Imagine your little one gets a wild hair up his ass and decides whatever is on the other side of the PONR that attracts his attention will somehow make his short life complete. And he main lines directly for it. And within about 6 inches of the TSA agent dutifully sitting on his ass on a stool and staring off into space until a wheelchair attendant approaches to let a chair roll down the ramp and bang into his shins, he cross a motion sensor that activates a trap door. And finds himself, mere seconds later, engulfed in a sea of multi-colored balls. Disco! After a 5 or 6 seconds of bewilderment, I guarantee you he will begin rockin’ and rollin’ amongst four or five hundred small plastic balls. Or maybe the moat could be filled with small bean bags! That would make for some prime romping time. And just think, if two kids find themselves in the moat together … BOOM! Instant play date! Hell, you could probably read an entire article about how Hillary screwed up Benghazi or how much Obamacare sucks and the Republicans are sure to win the election next time in Newsweek in that time.
Then again, you do run the risk of the little twerp deliberatley, or not, accidentally getting one caught in his mouth and he bites down. Now he’s got a mouth full of bean bag stuffing, which is almost certainly a choking hazard and definitely loaded with enough chemicals to ensure he sprouts a second nose within a year. I suppose it’s possible that the stuffing could very well be laced with enough fire-retardant chemicals that the kid might develop a Wolverine-like ability to heal any wound in a matter of seconds, but he’s still got the other kids at school making fun of him because of his second snout. Either way, you’ve got a whole new set of problems with your fire-proof mutated little piglet.
Okay, forget the bean bags idea.
Instead, imagine loosely scattered stuffed Dora the Explorers and Tickle Me Elmos among the balls. No 4 year-old kid is gonna turn that down.
Now, for the 5-7 age group who are still battling the ADHD rampant in their age group, the balls probably won’t have much of an impact. Don’t worry, gotcha covered there, too. Because of the fact that the multi-colored balls have only so much impact on older children, there comes bursting out of 1 out of every 10 balls via spring-loaded hatches within those balls, triggered by the wiggling and squirming of those kids trying to get out of the moat, a veritable mine field of Wild Berry Skittles, Sweethearts and peanut M’n’Ms. You’ve got colorful balls, you’ve got Elmo, and I defy you to name me a kid that doesn’t love peanut M’n’Ms. Go on. I dare ya.
Remember that the point in all of this is to distract your little one enough that he inadvertently remains on the safe side of the PONR long until your plane boards. And yes, I acknowledge that once you are on the plane, he becomes the concern of you, your fellow passengers and the flight crew how to keep him sedated enough to travel to your destination. By the way, I fully support and condone the use of sedatives in this situation. I hear Benadryl works wonders.
My Zen Brain 