Entitled Parents

Nobody needs two pairs of headphones! Give my child yours

I was in the airport getting ready to fly home for my younger brother's birthday. I'm getting ready to do a production of A New Brain right now so I had both headphones and earbuds in. My headphones were playing recordings of the songs while the earbuds played a recording of me talking through the instrumentation so I could just practice while sitting or standing in line. It's a super common practice among conductors. I was practicing while sitting in the terminal waiting for boarding to start. Enter entitled parent:

EP: "Oh! Are you a musician?"

Me: "Yeah I'm a conductor with the [Local theatre group] we're doing a produ-" She cut me off.

EP: "That's great! My son is a musician too" She gestured towards a ~9 year old kid sitting a few seats down from me.

Me: "Oh cool, what does he play?"

EP: "He listens to a lot of classical music"

Now, I have a degree in musicology; I know that listening to classical music can be a full chore as analysis of a single piece can take Hours if you go in depth enough, but this kid didn't seem like the analysis type. That being said, I always want to encourage young musicians and so I went with it.

Me: "Oh! That's nice"

EP: "Yeah! Do you think he could have your headphones so he could listen to his music on the flight?" She said, already reaching for my headphones.

Me: "Well, I'm actually practicing right now, but once I finish a few more songs he can borrow my earbuds for a bit!"

EP frowns and glares at me: "You have two pairs of them, just give him one and you can listen on the other."

I start to explain that I need both as I recorded my own voice for the directions, but she cuts me off again.

EP: "You're an adult! You should be ashamed that you're making up excuses to deny the happiness of a child!"

Around this point I decided that I didn't really want to deal with this, so I calmly said "Please sit down or I'll ask airport security to mediate this discussion" and put my music back on as she sat back down staring directly at me.

When I finished my set, I figured the mom had probably calmed down by this point and that I could let the kid borrow my earbuds for a bit. I walked over with my earbuds and offered to let the kid borrow them. The kid seemed happy and was reaching for them when the mom stopped him.

EP: "No, he wants the headphones"

Me: "Sorry, but I use those for work. I really can't lend them out as they're kind of pricy."

EP: "Lend?"

I was a little taken aback: "I'm sorry, did you think I was going to give your child my headphones?"

EP: "You have two pairs! You obviously don't need them." She pulled out her wallet like she was gonna buy them off me "How much are they?"

Me: "$350"

EP goes red in the face: "Liar! Stop being an ass" There are several people looking over at us at this point, and I'm a 6'3" bearded man so in these kinds of interactions I'm usually made out to be the bad guy. I went back to my seat without another word and turned up my music.

About 10 minutes later an airport security guy taps my shoulder.

ASG: "Sir, where did you get those headphones?" I look behind him to see EP with a giant shit-eating grin on her face.

Me: "I brought them from home. I use them for work"

ASG: "We have reports of you taking them from another customer. Do you have any proof that they belong to you?"

My lock screen is me sitting at a soundboard wearing those headphones, and they have a sticker on the side that matches my business card. The guy apologized and left. I heard the woman yelling at him for a while longer, but she didn't bother me in the terminal at any point after that.

During the flight, I saw her walking down the isle holding a cup from the drink cart and clearly looking through the seats for something. When she saw me she started very deliberately walking in my direction and I realized she was gonna "trip" and drop the drink on me. I just moved my stuff into my bag and waited. I was in a window seat, so she also got soda on two other people who were a lot more pissed off than I was.

I'd love to say that EP got thrown off the plane or something, but the other two people in the seats just sorta got mad at her. I still have the headphones and so I consider that a victory though.