Washington - So it's come to this: America's love for dogs and other furry non-humans has become so all-consuming that people on an airplane will cheer when a seven-year-old boy is removed from a flight because he had an allergic reaction to animals on board.
A kid who was on his way home to Phoenix after an especially meaningful trip to Bellingham, Washington, with his father, who has been diagnosed with terminal stage-4 cancer.
The story - reported by local TV stations in Washington and Arizona - says Giovanni and his parents went to Washington state for a vacation as part of the father's “bucket list” of things that he hoped to do before he dies.
On the return trip, the boy, who goes by Gio, began to have an allergic reaction to animals on the plane, Allegiant Flight 171 to Phoenix.”He began to get very itchy,” his mother, Christina Fabian, told King 5 News in Washington.
undefined“He was scratching all over and he started to get hives. So we informed the flight attendant, who informed us that, 'Well, there's dogs on every flight,' and just smirked.”
The flight's takeoff was delayed, the couple said, and the family was asked to debark. The mother said she understood. But both parents told reporters that what happened next was deeply painful. Some passengers laughed at the boy in distress. And when the family packed up their belongings and exited the aircraft, some passengers clapped.
“I felt hopeless when everyone started laughing at me and my kid,” the father, George Alvarado, told KPNX TV news in Arizona. “He was thinking that it's his fault. He just kept saying, 'Sorry, sorry.' All of a sudden he just started crying.”
Giovanni seemed to handle the event with grace.
“People that do not have sadness do not understand what it feels like for people who do have sadness,” he told the Arizona news crew.
The Washington Post
* Fredrick Kunkle runs the Tripping blog, writing about the experience of travel.