9 Hours.

The flight from hell was a Qantas 747 from Bangkok to Sydney.

I sat three rows back from the front on an aisle seat. In front of me were two Australian girls who were obviously fans of Paris and Nicole. In front of them was “Super Hippie Mom” with a daughter (early teens), a son (about 4) and a set of twins (about 2).

The girl twin cried a lot. The boy twin was always fine until the girl twin cried then he would cry with her causing a loud stereophonic high pitch sound that would fill the entire cabin. This happened about 80% of the 9-hour flight back to Sydney and I'm not talking about a little whimpering cry, I mean it was like a fork in the baby's side kind of crying. The kids were screaming. My brain was in turn, melting.

They could have had colic, they could be sick; they could have a tooth coming in. You tell yourself all the valid reasons why it's perfectly fine that those babies have been screaming for several hours strait but in the end you still start to fantasize about some birds flying serenely in the air until two small screaming children abruptly fall past them at 32 feet per second towards the earth with me screaming out of the opened door above; "There, now ya got something to cry about, don't ya?!"

But, you know, I am not really that mean. Not to little children anyway.

Eventually, I start having delusions again except this time the fantasy involves hippie mom falling to earth while I still yell out the open door "If your going to have a litter of kids, then try paying attention when they cry for five hours ya jackass!"

I know, I know. Again, I was just venting in my mind. Maybe there was a perfectly good reason why now the kids were sitting up in their wall strapped baby cribs, raised and facing everyone on the plane and screaming now with all their power over the top of everyone’s head.

The older brother started getting up in his seat and screwing around with the Aussie girls, He would cover up their movie screen they were watching when they wouldn't pay attention to him. There was some mild humor in that, I tried to focus so my eye ball wouldn’t pop out from all the throbbing

In the end, I only found comfort in cranking up the headphones as loud as possible and delving into the fantasy of opening the door to the plane one last time, sucking us all out as we all fell towards earth at 32 feet per second but with a smile on my face knowing that I never had to hear those friggi’n kids scream again.

The movie was Hellboy and Scooby Doo 2. The meal was Lasagna. The plane was delayed half an hour taking off and delayed landing due to heavy traffic at Sydney airport.