The flight that was almost from Hell but stopped just short

Let me tell you something about babies: they scream. Impressively loud and for excruciatingly long periods of time.

My first flight to Detroit passed without incidence, except for the woman sitting near me who told me that her husband (whom I was sitting next to) only bites sometimes. Concerning? A little.

Then there was the flight from Detroit to Amsterdam. While waiting to board I spotted approximatly 6 babies. I say approximatly because one was borderline toddler and I figured the probability of him screaming bloody murder was quite different than that of the actual baby-babies: an appropriate calculation on my part.

So, the flight that was almost from Hell but stopped just short started when I got in line to board the plane. I was standing next to a German woman who asked me if I was stopping in Amsterdam. At least I think that's what she asked me, I can't quite be sure because her accent was as thick and impossible to decipher as that mystery meat you used to get in the middle school cafeteria. She probably asked me where the closest bathroom was or something because after telling her that I had one more plane she just stared at me for about 3 seconds (which is a long time when a slightly intimidating German woman is the one doing the staring), gave me a single blink and moved forward in the line. Oooook.

I got on the plane, found my seat (middle row...dangit) and sat next to what seemed to be a very nice British man. We were pretty stoked because it looked like the plane had quite a few empty seats on it, and I was particularly excited to  have the opportunity to stretch out my arthritic knees every now and again. No such luck. Not only did babies # 1 and 2 start shrieking in the first 2.3 seconds, but I was joined by a burly Italian to my right, who happened to be too tall to fit his legs straight forward and had to resort to moving one of his legs into my pre-defined leg space. Not cool, Italian. I paid for this 2x3 area of plane and you are encroaching. At this point babies # 3 and 4 had joined in the assault, and British guy and I soon realized that we were surrounded. One in front, one in back, and two on either side. It was like a screaming baby army. Merciless.

After what felt like an hour they started playing the plane safety videos on everyone's personal little TV's. This was when I realized that something was very, very wrong with my TV. It wasn't on. BLACK. Visions of a similar situation of my flight from France to the US 2 years ago flashed through my mind...at least I wasn't now sitting next to a pregnant woman who had to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes. "She's probably on this very plane...and one of these babies is probably hers" I thought to myself. She just wouldn't leave me alone.

At this point I started thinking about all the things I may have done to deserve a 7 hour plane ride surrounded by foreign men who don't understand personal space, a broken TV and baby assassins. I figured it must have been because I accidentally put the chocolate syrup in before the milk when making some chocolate milk the other day. Cardinal sin: everyone knows that the milk should go in first.

I had resigned myself to listening to my iPod 7 hours, which is a little too reminiscent of my library days for comfort but luckily, things turned around. I guess karma doesn't care about chocolate milk, after all. After poking my TV angrily for about 2 minutes (I find that always works when technology refuses to cooperate) it finally decided to come back to life. Miraculously, babies #1-4 stopped crying and the flight passed fairly quickly. Mr. Italian never figured out that he should stick his legs in the aisle instead of under my seat, and Mr. England blew his nose like a foghorn every 30 minutes on schedule, but other than that I would say that the flight that was almost from Hell somehow managed to only be from somewhere very close to Hell...like Kansas.