I used to go to church with my family when I was little. My mom would listen to the preist, my dad would stare out of the window wishing he could be anywhere else, and my sister and I would eat Cheerios out of a Ziplock bag, laughing at the obviously gay man who would sometimes do readings from the Bible (the biggest laugh he ever got out of us when when he read a passage that included the phrase “The pole on their shoulder, the rod of their taskmaster”). Good times.

When Heidi and I were really young we had to sit in a special area of the church reserved for parents with young children. It was behind a glass partition, sound-proof, and had speakers so you could hear the priest. I remember sitting in there, surrounded by crying kids (and my crying sister), watching the old people out in the main church not noticing the cacophony a few feet behind them. It was a great system since kidless couples didn’t have to deal with screaming babies and the parents of those screaming babies didn’t have to be embarrassed that their children were interrupting the word of God because they had just shit their diaper. 

I fly a decent amount for work and have had dozens of flights made much more uncomfortable by a screaming kid. So why don’t planes have a special walled-off kid’s section? If you’re flying with a cry-prone child, you have to sit in the special area with other young families (and although the drawing says ‘glass’, I imagine it would be a wall of plexiglass instead). If there were extra seats back there, childless people could buy them for a reduced price since it’s going to be loud and smell like diapers. It’s also at the back of the plane so all the passengers with babies would get on first and get their diaper bags/strollers/nannies out of everyone’s way for general boarding. 

I’d pay 5% more for plane tickets if I was guaranteed to never have a screaming baby wake me up during a red eye or interrupt me while I’m trying to watch the latest Ryan Reynolds movie. 

Drawing by Derek Winegar