If you have watched the TV sitcom Seinfeld, you remember the Bubble Boy episode. That was George Constanza’s description for the kid with immunity issues, who spent his days inside a plastic bubble.

Over the past year-plus, the UAE has had its own “boy” — the inevitably named “Fear-of-Flying Boy”. And local media, including The National, wrote several stories about him

Well, the Fear-of-Flying Boy has, finally, flown home to England.

How was it done?

Through hypnotherapy, according to The National story.

Young “Joe” is back in the UK with his mother and sister, who had returned a year and a half ago, when the plan was for the whole of the family to go back.

The Fear-of-Flying Boy, now 12, had a sudden onset of panic attacks pertaining to flying, and had gotten off every plane meant to take him out of the UAE.

At one point, his fear of travel seemed to have crossed over into ships and even automobiles, when he refused a chance be driven from the UAE to Egypt, where he and his father would take ship for England.

We ran several stories on the Fear-of-Flying Boy, and more than a few editors were weary of Joe and his travails. “Not Flying Boy again!” was uttered at more than one news meeting.

If you read the Seinfeld “Bubble Boy” entry, linked above, you would note that the reviewer of the episode suggested:

“American journalists had in the past covered ‘bubble boys’ who lived in quarantine due to an immune deficiency. The coverage often played for sympathy, ignoring anything about the subject other than his medical condition. The bubble boy in this episode, however, is rude, selfish and impossible to sympathize with.”

I’m not sure anyone at the newspaper ever thought that the Fear-of-Flying Boy was rude or selfish, but it was suggested that the family did not at all mind the repeated stories (I count at least six done by The National) in media outlets here and in Britain.

It was unclear why the family did not simply sedate the kid. His ordeal would have been over on the second try. Knock him out. Dramamine probably would have sufficed. A sleeping pill. Valium. He would have been asleep before takeoff and would have had to be roused after he was on the ground, at Heathrow, after the eight-hour flight.

No, you would not want a Fear of Flying Boy to become conditioned to the drugs enabling him to fly, but the point of this was to get him on one plane, one time.

Now, he can go for more therapy, and maybe he flies again, someday. And maybe he does not. But he is home with the whole of his family, and he doesn’t have to go anywhere if he cannot deal with it.

And his run as a sort of celebrity, in The National (and other media), presumably is over.