Discipline

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Location: Flight from Seattle to Tokyo

I boarded my flight to Tokyo and sat down. I had never been to Asia and I was nervous. It seemed very foreign. Much more foreign than Europe.

I had an aisle seat. Looking forward and to my left, across the aisle, I could see a little Japanese boy. He was maybe four years old.

We waited for takeoff. After ten minutes of waiting, with nothing to do, the little boy started to whine.

The boy's father was sitting in front of me. He bolted out of his seat, shot across the aisle, grabbed the boy by the shoulders, and shook him violently. Then he grabbed the boy's head, forced the boy to look him in the eyes, and growled something at the boy in Japanese with the intensity of a gangster in a mafia movie issuing a death threat.

The little boy sat quietly for the entire 10 hour flight.

I was already nervous about going to Asia. That didn't help.

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