Noogie Diplomacy

Controversy is swirling over news that a child was given permission to direct traffic at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. A recording made on February 17th revealed that a young boy’s voice was heard making at least five transmissions to the flight crews of passenger aircrafts. One portion of the transcript had the boy clearing an aircraft for takeoff. Evidently the children were visiting the control tower during a week-long school break.

I honestly don’t see what all the fuss is about. Presumably the children were given instructions on what to say, and from what I heard, the pilots found the conversations rather entertaining. One would think that if they had any concerns they would have expressed it.

Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be interesting if kids were in charge of a few other things? For example, imagine if they ran network television. Kiss those predictable police-lawyer-hospital dramas goodbye, and say hello to back-to-back episodes of Wipeout. At least half of all sports coverage would focus on the team mascot or the guy with the funny hair who just spilled beer on his pants. News programs would feature stories about videogame cheats, the newest flavor of Skittles and that kid in grade four who can stick virtually anything up his nose.

Winter carnivals would start at the first snowfall and end when the last remnant of a snowbank melted. Which wouldn’t be a problem, since everyday of winter would be a snow day.

The movie Avatar would probably be identical, except the dialogue would be way better.

If kids ran the government, legislative debate would be replaced by a giant game of dodge ball; the team with the last kid standing passes the law. Huge military budgets would be redirected to figuring out how to extract dinosaur DNA from amber to create a super army of T-Rexes.

The UN would be way more effective with kids in charge. ‘All in favor of the resolution to give the ambassador for Iran a huge noogie, say aye.’

I suspect that if kids were in charge, a lot of global issues would be resolved rather quickly. If people are starving or sick somewhere in the world, then just fill every airplane we’ve got with food and medicine and send it there. It would only take a day, and we’ve certainly got enough airplanes, food and medicine. Heck, if people are living in a country with no food or shelter, fly them back. We’ve all got spare rooms or a sofa bed, and we’d have way more players for the dodge ball teams.

I also don't think children would waste any time settling some of the world’s ongoing conflicts. All kids would prefer to have their mom or dad tuck them in at night, rather than trying to survive on a distant battlefield fighting with someone else’s mom or dad.

While it’s true that our children have much to learn about the complexity of the world, they also possess a remarkably acute sense of fairness, something that often gets lost in the vast layers of gray in adulthood.

So, if a kid can clear an airliner for takeoff, maybe understanding some of our global challenges is a lot simpler than we thought.

Tag, you’re it.