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Northwest is not winning points with me, lately. The first leg of my flight to Copenhagen was two hours late, causing me to wait for four hours in Amsterdam — which is too long to kill idly, but just too short to dash into the city. But that was nothing compared to my trip home.

The agent at the desk refused to let me carry on my carry-on-sized bag, claiming it was too large. This is an error that costs me 20 minutes of baggage retrieval at Sea-Tac, which has a terrible two-carousel system which makes hundreds of people at a time waste their energy fighting each other to get to their bags after choosing the wrong carousel. Thanks. I appreciate it.

I have Silver Elite status on Northwest. Usually, this gets me some kind of benefit. In this case, though, it was a curse. I was seated in 10E, in the center of the foremost bulkhead row. This is usually fine: you strain a little to watch the movie, but otherwise, there’s no trouble sliding out to the lavatory, you get a decent amount of legroom, and nobody’s going to slam their seat back in your face pretending to sleep.

The problem is when you’re sharing that row with a newborn. Or, in my case, four infants and toddlers. No, I’m not exaggerating. A and B were a couple with a 2-year-old redhead girl. C and D were a couple on their second leg of a trip that started in India, with a 9-month-old girl in tow. G, H and J were another couple, their 2-year-old girl, and a newborn. F was empty, but for the five bags G had unloaded in the interest of child management.

By takeoff, two of them were screaming. That’s understandable: on takeoff and landing, an infant’s ears undergo a major change in pressure that they’re usually unable to relieve on their own. I let that part slide. But an hour into the flight, it’s clear that A and the toddler in J are going to be A Problem For Me, as they are taking turns screaming like banshees, with another two kids in the two rows behind us joining in the chorus. I am woken from a sound sleep before we even leave the tarmac.

That’s okay, I think to myself. Taking off my shoes is relaxing enough that I’ll fall right back to sleep. Turns out, not so much: when I put my feet on the floor, they suddenly feel wet. I look down and see a large dark spot in the carpeting, which looks as if someone has spilled an entire Coke on the floor. Now, I’m sure it wasn’t me, and C, D and G are too busy tending to their little bundles for cola beverages. So now I’m faced with a challenge: my feet are wet and sticky. If I put them back in my shoes, the lining will then become sticky. If I put them back on the floor, I’ll be squishy for hours. I spend the next two hours balancing my feet on the heels of my shoes until they’re suitably dry.

Halfway through the flight, A is showing off her special power: as she screams, her head turns freely in 360 degrees, independent of her body. The kid in D made noise maybe once the entire trip, but the parents in G and H are engaged in constant busywork, punctuated by loud screams from the toddler. The movie, Miracle, is playing above my head — apparently in 3D, unless it’s just horribly bad projector calibration. Moving out of my seat presents another dilemma: over the sleeping couple to my left, or the suitcase on the floor and the nursing mother they belong to on my right? The beverage cart arrives, and I think about asking for a shot, but am concerned that I would screw up my order and ask to be shot.

Fast-forward to the disembarkation. That puddle under my feet? It was the holding tank from the galley. I had been sitting in the waste beverages of everyone on the flight. Hooray. And after plunking down in front of the economy class carousel, the bag naturally arrives on the Business Class carousel, 20 minutes later.

Next time, they can skip the goddamn bulkhead seat. I’m traveling to Europe by steamship from now on.