The boy who stopped the airplane and an invention.

We were in the airport, getting ready to board our plane. We had about 15 minutes left before the gate opened to let us board. I thought I would use that time to take our two and a half year old to the bathroom before we got on the plane. He had been potty trained for about 6 months and was pretty good about telling me when he had to go. He went with me to the bathroom but insisted that he did not need to go.

I really should have known better.

I was not so savvy about airplane potty training ways then. I hadn’t gotten the verbage down for convincing toddlers that they should “try” even if they didn’t feel like they had to go without the dramatic acting and racing to the bathroom that we normally did at home. This would be a defining moment that forced me to add some tools to my parenting tool belt. I don’t even think it crossed my mind to tell him to try — because for a few months, I had been relying on him telling me when he needed to go. Plus, I figured that I could take him to the bathroom again when we got on the airplane just before takeoff. After we sat in our seats, I said, “It’s time to go to the bathroom before we take-off.”

He insisted, “I don’t have to go.” He was always very sure of himself and insistent in all of his decisions. So we decided to buckle him in and hope that he could make it until we were at cruising altitude and could move about the cabin.

The plane started to taxi and about 30 seconds into our taxiing, he said, “I have to go to the toilet.”

I responded, “Can you wait?”

“No! I have to go, right now,” he said as he wiggled in his seat. I didn’t know what to do because I knew that he could not wait for 30 minutes until we were up in the air but we were taxiing!

It was beyond me how he could think that he did not need to go just a few minutes before. And now it was REALLY urgent. I scrunched up my face and looked at my husband, lifting up my left eyebrow, wondering what we should do. He mirrored my smirk , “Maybe we should call the flight attendant?”

I pressed the button to the call the flight attendant and the little light over our row lit up. Luckily, the flight attendants had not been sitting in their seats yet. A very nice woman came to see what we needed.

“My son just announced that he has to go tot he bathroom and he can’t wait, I’m not sure what to do.” I said.

She paused, pursed her lips together for a moment, thinking and then said, “Hold on a minute, I’ll be right back.” She went to the cockpit and spoke with the pilot. Returning about a minute later, she said, “We are pulling the plane out of the flight queue and parking so he can go to the bathroom.”

Looking back at this moment now, 14 years later, I wish that I could have thought in that moment how amazing the crew was. I wish that I could say I was relieved, calm, cool and collected about the whole situation but I was pretty embarrassed walking past all the other passengers, who knew that WE stopped the plane. I was thinking, “what if they were late for their connecting flights? They would probably think it was our fault.”

He was so darn cute though, at 2 1/2 that I think most people understood and didn’t mind.

But if the bald guy that had the raspberry spit bubble land on his head was on that plane, I imagine he would not have been happy and would have been complaining. If you haven’t read my story about that yet, you can read: Traveling With Small Children: The Art of Distraction.

We walked past most of the other passengers and I said to him, as we were nearing the bathroom, “You better hurry up, the entire plane is waiting for you. They stopped the plane for us.”

The flight attendant overheard me and said, “That’s a lot of pressure.”

To avoid an incident like this again, an idea lightbulb popped into my head and the “Bladder Scanner” was born.

One afternoon, not too much longer after the airplane stopping incident, we were going out, and I said, “We are going to get in the car. Let’s “try” to go to the bathroom before we leave.”

He said, “I don’t need to go.”

“Let me check,” I responded.

I waved my hand in front of his abdomen. I explained, “My hand is a “Bladder Scanner.”

While making the movements of running my hand over the front of his body, about 6 inches away, I further explained, “My hand can tell if your bladder is full. When I pass my it over your belly and your bladder is full, it will make a high pitched beeping sound like this ‘Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep’. When I pass my hand over your bladder and it empty, it will make a low pitched sound like this, “Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.”

And when I passed my hand over his bladder, I would make a high-pitched beeping sound indicating that his bladder was full. He would go to the bathroom and try, and would always have to go.

It was like magic!

Hence the bladder scanner knew the truth!

This actually worked until he was about six years old. And then realized that my hand was actually not a scanner. I think he knew before that, and maybe played along for a while, but finally figured it out. But he had a younger sister that we had to keep the story going for.

She caught on to my trickery a bit earlier and tried to trick the bladder scanner herself. She would go to the bathroom and then come and ask, “Can you check my bladder with the bladder scanner?” She knew that it would be empty and should make the low pitched “Beeeeeeeeeeeeep.” But she did not know that I was onto her and was usually one step ahead.

At some point, she caught on to the fact that I caught on and it became more challenging for me to always be able to guess the right sound to make and so finally I confessed that the bladder scanner was just a figment of my imagination.

It was fun while it lasted. And quite useful.