Manic Motherhood: Family Vacations are not for the Faint of Heart

About once a year, hubby and I like to do this thing we call "the family vacation." I don't know if you've ever taken a family vacation, but trust me when I say that if there's family involved, it isn't really a vacation.

That aside, we took a family vacation this year and, like most vacations, it involved travel by airplane. Look, I don't fly well. I'm one of those people who firmly believes that airplanes are a necessary evil. Honestly, before they started tossing drunk people off planes, an hour or two in the airport lounge was time well spent if you wanted to prevent me from having a panic attack the minute plane backed away from the gate. In fact, the few pleasant times I've had flying were when I flew first class. Oh, not for the cushy seats and decent food. It was the free-flowing champagne. I'm not afraid to admit that I need to drink and fly.

To make matters worse, airlines hate me. HATE ME. Seriously. If there is luggage lost, it's mine. Once, an airline lost my luggage on a direct, nonstop flight. And when I say my luggage, I mean mine. Not hubby's. Not Junior's. Mine. Even though we all checked in at the same time and we were all going to the same place.

Yes, I am a little bitter. But frankly that's what happens when you spend two days rinsing out your underwear each night so you don't have to resort to sharing man-panties with your husband.

Anyway, so this year, we did our family vacation and of course, boarded an airplane-and it goes without saying we were flying coach. Anyway, the first leg of our flight was no problem. It was so pleasant that I had only had a bottle of water the entire flight.

And then we got to Dallas and changed planes. The plane pulled away from the gate, went out to the runway and sat. On the tarmac. In the heat. With no A/C on. In a city where the temps hovered at oh, a billion degrees with 99% humidity.

And have I mentioned that the flight was completely full? Because it was. And every single passenger was sweaty and gasping for the last of the hot, stale air. Finally, the flight attendant came over the intercom and told us to try turning on those air doo-hickeys that are right above each person. All that did is cause us all to wave our smelly armpits around while we desperately twisted the air thingies and tried not to take a deep breath.

And after that there was silence. Until my son, my only child, decided that right then would be a good time to play with his iPod. Specifically, it would be a good time to play with an app called iFart. And yes, the app does exactly what you think it does.

So as we sat in a silent plane full of sweaty, shallow breathing people, an iFart described as "The Wipe Out" went off. You could feel the entire plane tense. Every person in the plane drew a dreaded deep breath and held it hoping like heck that The Wipe Out didn't translate to Green Cloud of Death. And then my son, my only child, broke the silence with one word:

"MOM!"

Have I mentioned that he's my son, my only child? Because I swear to you, that's the only thing that kept me from killing him. Well, that and the fact that every single person on the plane was glaring at me so obviously there would be witnesses. But before I could protest and say something lame like, "the dog did it" the plane's engines started up and we took off.

Now I don't know for sure, but I did hear a rumor that the pilots, upon hearing The Wipe Out reverberate throughout the plane, told the tower in no uncertain terms that the airplane had to take off immediately so the A/C could come on and the passengers could breathe freely again.

And you know what? The airline got revenge on me. On the flight home, we got seats right in front of the airplane's only working restrooms. Yeah, you can imagine how fun that was. On the plus side, I did arrive home with all of my luggage.

About Manic Motherhood: Laurie Sontag is the author of the popular humor blog, Manic Motherhood at http://lauriesontag.com and has been a humor columnist for California newspapers since 2001. If you can't find her at Manic Motherhood, check under the sofa. She's not there, but she likes it when somebody else tries to find the lost socks and freak out the dust bunnies.