Parents demand adult son pick them up from the airport early when their flight lands before scheduled, tell him off for being "late": 'I didn't think it was a big deal, but apparently they were stewing'

A tried and true rite of passage of the holidays is picking family up from and dropping them back off at the airport. Early hours on lack of sleep, making a comically long drive to the airport and back while the rest of the world is sleeping, and once you've picked someone up from the airport, you're rewarded with the knowledge that at some point you will have to go back to drop them off again.

Although you might be shell-shocked and weary for the rest of the day, it's all worth it, because it's the holidays and this is just something you do for family. It's a favor that you don't even really question, as if it is etched in the covenants of familial obligations. It's even something that you look forward to, the chance to see the familiar face of a loved one after a long time apart, separated by distance and life's obligations.

This, presumably, adult man was asked to pick his semi-retired parents up from the airport, something that he regularly did for them as the rest of us do for our family. The issue here was that his parents seemingly didn't understand that we, the younger generations, keep our phones on silent with notifications in do not disturb, and so there was a lapse in communication between the parents and their son when their flight arrived early at the airport.

We have enough going on and enough demands already in our lives that the last thing we need is some call, text, or notification tearing our already fractured attention away from the things that we need to focus on in the moment. It, in a way, is an answer, a solution that we have developed in response to a world where everything is constantly vying for our attention as a means for profit.

One would also argue that there was an agreed-upon time, and their expectation that he arrive early at their whim and demand and be at their beck and call is quite entitled. Their ensuing meltdown brought other familial issues to the surface as the man's father laid into him with how disappointed he was in his "irresponsible" son.

While there is definitely the issue of a difference in expectation and communication here, it's safe to say that this is probably the one situation that would cause me to never pick my parents up from the airport again.