No Child Left Behind

Have you ever been in the airport gate when you look up from the 800 page book you can’t seem to finish to s-l-o-w-l-y realize that you were surrounded. by. children? On my flight to San Diego there were…no joke…53 kids on the flight. 53. Did I inadvertently sign up for the Disney Flight? HALF the passengers on the plane were under the age of 12!! Is that even statistically possible? Great…I have priority boarding on the Baby Talk Express. And it wasn’t even a direct flight to San Diego…I was going through Vegas! Is the Skippy John Jones convention ALWAYS the first week of July???

Now I don’t mind kids, but 53? I tried to volunteer for a bump (“No…I don’t mind being routed through Miami on the way to San Diego”), but no dice. Then I tried to trade my A16 in for a C boarding pass so I could see where all the little tykes settled before committing to a seat. The whole time I couldn’t help thinking “this is how Lord of the Flies started, isn’t it?”

The flight, of course, was a prison riot. It may have been a frequent flier ticket…but it.wasn’t.free, if you know what I mean. The jetway was littered with discarded strollers, the overhead compartments were jammed with skateboards. I seriously expected to be served a drink by a waitress in a Mickey costume. And for the first time EVER I was actively making eye contact with passengers looking for a seat – beseeching ANYONE outside child-bearing ages to take the seat beside me. As it was, the kid behind me made farting noises with his hands for the last 600 miles of the trip.

As if it wasn’t enough that a Pampers black market had broken out in row 23, the baby-walking traffic in the aisle was SERIOUSLY delaying my bailey’s and coffee [drink coupon]. If I hadn’t won the championship round of Hokey Pokey, the flight would have been a complete disaster.