Man confronts flight attendant after child gets glitter on him; mom lays into him. AITA?

Flying should be magical in theory. You're gliding hundreds of miles an hour through the clouds to a faraway destination in the fraction of the time it took our ancestors to travel.

But the reality is often cramped seats, sore necks, and annoying seatmates hampering the magic of flight. Even if your personal flying experiences have been A+, you don't have to be on the internet long before you hear other people's flight-from-hell stories.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a man shared his flight from hell story, and asked if he was wrong for confronting a mom who was crafting with her child on the flight.

He wrote:

AITA for reporting a mother and her glitter monster to a flight attendant?

I had a situation that happened to me on a long-haul flight yesterday and I need your verdict. I'd paid for an aisle seat in main cabin extra because of my long legs. It was a packed flight and my row-mates were a mother (late 30s?) with a young child (maybe 5 or 6).

They brought a bunch of arts and crafts to keep the kid busy - things like a glue stick, markers, paper, craft sticks. Sounds cute, right? Well, not when the glitter came out. The child, let's call her Glitter Godzilla (GG), was making a mess, and since she was in the middle seat, the glitter would spill over onto my side.

If you remember glitter from elementary school, it’s messy AF if you try attaching it to paper. There’s a lot of shake off and most of it doesn’t stick. So yeah the glitter and marks from the glue stick rolling off the gray table was everywhere - on my shoes, my backpack, and my jeans. I'm patient and get kids can be messy, but this felt crazy.

I tried catching the mom's eye, hoping she'd step in. But she just gave me a blank look like 'this is how it is.' I’m not confrontational so when I got up to use the bathroom, I quietly shared the situation with a flight attendant. She promised to discretely address it. When I got back to my seat, the mother was pissed.

Idk what the flight attendant said but the mom claimed I was being discriminatory against mothers, and since the flight was delayed she was just trying to keep her child entertained. Then she started raising her voice, accusing me of being 'a selfish man with no understanding of children.' All this despite the fact that my lower half now looks bedazzled.

There were no other seats available, so I was stuck the rest of the flight with this lady’s verbal attacks. The flight attendants gave me looks of sympathy but didn’t want to step in. Of course the mother gave me a final f#$k you as we deplaned. I travel a lot and this was the flight from hell. Not to mention it was pretty embarrassing in the airport. Not that I can blame people taking notice.

AITA here? Was I wrong to get some help in dealing with what felt like a glitter assault? Should I have just sucked it up and became a human art project?

People rushed to the comments to share their thoughts.

StAlvis wrote:

NTA.

If even a few pieces of glitter work their way into the plane's avionic systems, the entire flight is coming down.

... I mean, probably not, but that's what you say to the kid with a deathly serious face.

MotherBike wrote:

NTA. She could've at least been a glitter shield by putting her kid on the window seat.

empress1898 wrote:

NTA. A plane is not a child's classroom. Of course, it's not always easy to entertain children on planes. But if you bring arts and crafts, it shouldn't be anyone else responsibility but the parents to clean it up, and they shouldn't be surprised if people are put off it. Given her actions, she's just selfish and inconsiderate of others around her.

jaynesbluewish wrote:

NTA. I'm a mom. Who the f#$k brings glitter on a plane? Even if you're adamantly against screens there's a TON of other things that don't involve thousands of tiny sparkly things that inevitably get everywhere. Not only was she inconsiderate of you but she was inconsiderate of whomever had to clean that ungodly mess.

JustheBean wrote:

NTA. There are lots of ways to entertain kids on flights that aren’t hugely disrespectful to the flight staff and the passengers around you. That mother didn’t need to bring a giant mess of an activity with her. It’s not like you were complaining about something beyond her control (ie: babies crying and normal kid behavior).

Traditional coloring sheets, mess-free crayola crafts, countless iPad activities, stuffed animals, the options go on and on. I spend a lot of time advocating for kids existing in public as a nanny, and parents like this drive me absolutely crazy. They give everyone a bad reputation.

Clearly, OP is NTA, and the woman next to him didn't think of others when she brought that crafting stuff.