If you need to travel with kids, rent a car dammit.

** NOTE ** I typed this up months ago, but didn't publish it for some reason - I apologize.

I was going through my emails this morning as I was getting ready for a trip to Houston and came across this commercial that a friend sent several weeks ago. I sometimes never read forwarded emails, much less click on the links that someone sent me anymore, but occasionally I get the inclination to do so…

Up comes this commercial with a man walked through the grocery store with his son. The child starts putting a bunch of candy in the shopping cart, and the man immediately takes the candy out and puts it back on the shelf. After going back and forth a couple of times, the child then decides to throw a tantrum and goes on a tirade throughout the store, complete with the onlooker stare and the embarrassment that goes with it. The camera pans back to the man, and the caption pops up on the screen – "Why you should wear condoms."

No further commentary needed on that one, but it does bring me to what prompted me to write this in the first place. I'm sitting on the plane on the way to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (why the hell International wasn't enough I'll never figure out) in one of those middle seats – fortunate for me the ladies on each side of me were very attractive (but I digress) – and the kids sitting behind me and to the left were some of the loudest, annoying brats I've had to listen to through my noise-cancelling headphones. The kids behind me had some loud game or video system that kept on making me wonder if I had my MP3 player up too loud. Thank goodness "the Captain has turned on the seatbelt signs indicating we are making our final approach" and the kid that kept running up and down the aisle will have to sit down.

Don't get me wrong – I love kids, and want some in the future. When I grew up, when I was told to sit down and shut up, I knew my parents meant it. I knew my grandparents meant it. I rarely moved until they said I could. Plain and simple. If I acted half the way I remembered acting when I was a child, I now realize why my parents used to get all kinds of compliments about my behavior. I knew that if I acted up in public, my parents were going to act worse when we got home.