No, YOU pick up the popcorn.

WARNING: This is not a very serious article.

“Clean up in aisle 11.”

A pregnant woman on an airplane had to pick up the popcorn that her children dropped around their seats. It’s a mundane occurrence for most people, but when your husband is a Major League Baseball player with some social media clout, it becomes a news event - a dumb one, but a news event nonetheless.

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass tweeted his outrage after a United flight attendant “made” his wife “get on her hands and knees to clean up the popcorn mess made by my youngest daughter.” Sydney Rae Bass is 22 weeks pregnant with the couple’s third child. She was traveling with her daughters, who are 5 and 2.

Reports indicate that the amount of popcorn on the floor (see photo above) represented a safety hazard. These weren’t tiny crumbs like at the bottom of a bag of popcorn; they were actual whole pieces of popcorn, some of which spilled into the aisle. What are the chances of someone losing their footing on a bunch of popcorn and injuring themselves? Probably slim, but better to not take chances.

We don’t know whether Sydney Rae Bass was politely asked or firmly told to pick up the popcorn. We can be fairly sure that she wasn’t “made” to do it. How exactly would the flight attendant force her to clean it up? Grab her by the hair and pull her to the ground? Threaten to throw her out of the plane with nothing more than a flotation device?

Anthony Bass says his wife is considered to have a high-risk pregnancy. She is, however, allowed to fly for a few more weeks, according to her husband. We don’t know if Sydney Rae Bass is forbidden from bending and reaching (things that she may or may not do at home), or if she made the flight attendant aware of her limitations when she was asked to clean up the mess.

All we know is that his wife was steaming mad and embarrassed. So she did what a lot of us do at such a moment: She texted people close to her. The difference is that when most of us text a family member or friend to complain, we get words of compassion (“I’m so sorry that happened to you! I hope the flight attendant has a terrible day!”) or a couple of an emojis (😿😡).

Sydney Rae Bass got a much bigger response. In addition to her husband’s initial tweet and his hundreds of replies to commenters on Twitter (the Blue Jays must have had the day off), Sydney Rae Bass received a flood of emotional support from her sister, Jesse James Decker. Decker shared with her many Instagram followers the embarrassment her sister felt as she was handed a wet wipe and a trash bag by the flight attendant.

Decker also pointed out that it was the flight attendant who gave the children popcorn in the first place, so she should clean it up. (Remember this when you go to Grandma’s house and she gives your kid a crumbly cookie. You just sit there and let Grandma clean up that mess.)

It’s all good now, though. A day after the incident, Decker shared a photo on Instagram of her niece sitting at home holding a large bag of popcorn. Not sure who’s going to clean up when she’s done.

For the record, I empathize with Sydney Rae Bass. I know what it’s like to have to lug small children with you. It’s exhausting, and often it puts you in a different frame of mind. You tend to run on emotions, and things you’d ordinarily shrug off become major issues. I probably would have grumbled and cried on the plane, too.

But I think she missed a big opportunity to teach her kids Personal Responsibility 101. “You dropped popcorn on the floor of the plane. Someone is asking for it to be cleaned. You two pick it up and then hand the trash bag to the flight attendant when you’re done.” Instead, we see two kids wearing headphones and playing on electronic devices, blissfully unaware of the situation. This sets a “mom will clean it up” mentality. Sorry to break it to you, Sydney Rae, but you’ll be doing this a lot if you don’t get those kids into the habit of picking up after themselves.

The other big problem with this story is that most of us have no business knowing about it. The fact that two adults took to social media to slam the airline seems ludicrous - although thank you, Anthony and Jesse, for giving me a writing prompt. In comparison to some of the serious issues in the world, picking up popcorn from the airplane floor seems pretty banal.

Is there a lesson to be learned? Perhaps. I think we can see ourselves in at least one of these individuals. The frustrated mom, the demanding flight attendant, the protective sister, the angry husband. We realize how easily we can blow things out of proportion and upset not just ourselves but the people around us. Maybe we can all take a few deep breaths before we make a situation more awful than it appears. And maybe Sydney Rae Bass should pack her own (crumb-free) snacks the next time she travels with the kids.