Thank all that's good in this world for Noise-Cancelling headphones...

With my aisle seat in the 6th row of coach, I was in the last boarding zone for my flight back to Columbus.  Which meant as I boarded I knew that I was going to be in for a long flight.

Immediately across the aisle from my seat was a husband and wife with their young son (18 months old or so?).  Immediately behind me was another young mother carrying a young child of around the same age (lap child, so definitely under 2 years old).  And a full flight so nowhere to move, not that it would have done much good.  Now the kid behind me was pretty good.  But the kid across the aisle, screamed almost the entire flight.  And boy do I mean screamed.

Thankfully as soon as we were allowed to use our electronic devices, I put on the noise cancelling headphones, hooked up the MP3 player and tried to zone out the distractions.  While I could still hear the young guy, he was much diluted from what he was when the headphones were off.  Poor guy though, he would cry until he became exhausted, recover for a while, and then start up all over again.