Baby On Board

In these dark times, Americans should take heart that their government is doing everything in its power to make them safer. With security for its citizens the foremost concern, stringent new enforcements of the "no-fly list" are going farther than ever before to keep the airlines free from an incursion of highly effective, disruptive people capable of firmly striking terror in the heart of every adult flier.

We are, of course, speaking of babies and toddlers.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our government is not hesitating to stop anyone in their tracks whose name appears on the "no-fly list", regardless of age! A recently released report stated that, last Thanksgiving, before boarding a return flight to Washington, a one-year old girl was stopped in Phoenix. A similar, more recent report states that, while departing from Dulles International Airport outside Washington, two parents were told by an airline ticket agent that their 11-month-old son was on the government list. The child was allowed to board the plane, but only after taking better than a half hour to chase down his passport and fill out the proper paperwork.

The ACLU claims that these are unavoidable mistakes, as the government does not provide enough information about those named on the list to effectively allow airport security to discern between the 35-40 year-old terrorist and little Johnny, age 11 months, who just happens to have a name exactly like, or similar to, someone already on the list. This is happening all across our nation and around the world at the ticket counters of all American air carriers.

There are some adults who would call this practice ludicrous; that no infant could ever pose a threat to any commercial airliner, and that the enforcement of the list is too poorly focused to be effective. On the other side of the coin, as the father of three, I know very well what small children in large groups are capable of, and I can say without hesitation that I applaud the efforts of our airport security teams. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a pressurized cabin at high altitude surrounded by any number of infants and toddlers, bombarded on all sides by excessive levels of noise and noxious fumes, has a very unique definition of the word 'purgatory'. Anyone who has had the misfortune to sit in coach on a cross-continental flight beside these smaller versions of ourselves has a reason to wish life was more like 'Star Trek', with ports on the walls to jettison dirty diapers into space, and the ability to erect a soundproof force-field between themselves and the constant barrage coming from the window seat, "LookitthatcloudMommy!Whatwasthatnoise?Didjaseethatbird?Why'sthatman'seyetwitching?"

Some might dub this all a horrible malfunction of today's system of security; that this could even become another form of profiling. Well, of course not. We don't take children to see adult-rated movies, we take them to see children's films. We don't take small children to casinos on vacation, we take them to resorts with water parks and amusement parks. Until they are of age, we don't take them onto golf courses that aren't populated by windmills and strange statues of former presidents.

I stand on my soapbox today to point out that we are a differentiating society. We do this out of necessity, shielding our children from certain elements that they may grow up in the best manner possible. Children are given to experiences at their own level, so they, like every other human on the planet, may learn best from their mistakes. They are not expected to learn yet from the mistakes of the adults. No child of toddler age or younger will learn its behavior from observing an adult. Sure, the child may mimic the adult for a short time, but then all the candy, soft drinks, and pent-up energy take over and they commence bouncing off the walls and ceiling of the aircraft like a free-flying gas molecule.

We have childrens' hospitals and childrens' hotels, childrens' television networks and childrens' radio. I propose a childrens' airline, composed of specially-designed aircraft that would allow these over-energetic, sugared-up, egocentric terrorists to be themselves, without being surprisingly disruptive. The adults on this flight would, of course, be the childrens' parents; people who would supposedly be immune to the splitting migranes that these little people would cause to the average person off the street. In its own way, this would actually be a more relaxing flight for the parents, as they wouldn't have to worry quite as much about their child's behavior. Those present would be expecting it of them, and the uncomprehending eyes of adults who do not know the joys of parenting would be comfortably absent from the scene.

We should rally around our government, and their crusade to protect us all from the incursion of pint-sized terrorists; these unsuspecting, tiny toddlers who, most times, do not understand that they're being so annoying but, nevertheless, can be just as disruptive on a flight as a grown man who claims to have a bomb tucked away in his shoes. With so few adjustments to our daily lives, we can enjoy a new era of comfortable air travel, and the 'friendly skies' may just be a bit more amicable.