Seated in a plane, a little more than halfway through a five-hour flight, traveling 530 miles per hour, about 41,000 feet above the Rockies, a baby began to cry.

Cry is too soft a word. Cry could mean weep. Cry could mean shed some tears. Cry could mean a sniffle and a wiping of the eyes. 

Still everyone understands what is meant when someone mentions some combination of the words “baby,” “plane” and some form of “cry,” “cried” or “crying.” Maybe we say it to be polite, but I read Facebook posts, people have no problem being blunt or rude.

When we say a baby cried on a plane, we really mean something more universal, something more profound … something more loud.

We mean a baby wailed on a plane. A baby screamed on a plane.

Not just a single shriek but a continuous series of siren blasts, piercing, persistent, shattering.

A baby began to scream 41,000 feet above the Rockies, screamed in the confined tube of a 737, for the remaining two hours-plus to our destination.

My wife and I were seated far enough away for the screaming to be manageable. I could still play a word game on my phone though my response time was slowed. Sleeping seemed impossible, though my wife might argue that I had no trouble sleeping through crying or screaming years ago when our sons awoke as babies in the middle of the night.

On the plane, beneath the wailing, a soft, rhythmic susurration could be heard. The mother’s voice. A sing song whisper, marked by the slow air leaks of lips pursed in a repeated “shhhhhh.” A certain panicked, apologetic effort by the mother to shush her crying child. A mother aware of how many people were rolling their eyes her way, of how many people were keeping their fractured tempers as semi-sorta secure as the seatbelts kept them restrained in their seats.

And though I had been one of those irritated, frustrated fellow passengers, even though I had raised children and understood that some times babies just cry, or scream, for no apparent reason than it probably feels good. … many of the passengers, myself included, would have probably felt much better if we all screamed at the top of our lungs at 41,000 feet but we stifled ourselves with grumbling and eye rolling instead … even with all of this experience and understanding, I suddenly chuckled and felt at ease. 

Why? Because I imagined my revenge upon that screaming baby. 

And in that imagining I quietly wished the baby to scream louder and louder.

Because I knew, I know, the louder and longer that baby cries, the more likely that poor, desperate, struggling, apologetically smiling for the understanding of strangers, shushing mother would never ever ever let that baby forget this flight.

I imagined into the future … 

The baby grown into a child, stubbing his toe and crying, and the mother reminding him of the time she couldn’t get him to stop crying on a cross-country flight.

The baby grown into a teen, and the mother telling his baseball buddies about the time their star pitcher – her son – bawled like the world was on fire on a plane.

The baby grown into a young man and the mother telling his fiancee about the time a group of plane passengers wanted to eject them at 41,000 feet above the Rockies because he would not stop crying and she, alone, a young mother, had to beg that their lives be spared from the angry mob.

The baby grown into a middle-age man with children of his own and the mother much older now telling her grandchildren how their father, as a baby, led to their flight nearly being forced to land somewhere in America because their father wouldn’t stop crying.

The baby grown and now a grandfather sighing a long, slow groan as his ancient, frail mother again shares the story of how he cried every single second of a cross-country flight and how she broke down crying, a story he’s heard a million times his entire life though he’s certain it gets a little worse with each re-telling …

With these thoughts, I stretched my legs as best I could, closed my eyes, a smile on my face, and drifted off to sleep even though a baby kept screaming at 41,000 feet.

Dean Poling is a former editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and The Tifton Gazette.