If I ever fly again, I hope it can be on AirTran.

Little kids do not belong on airplanes, period. In an ongoing case of life mirroring the routine of a bad stand-up comedian, I truly do get stuck one row away from a screaming baby almost every time I fly (though last time the screaming baby was a drunken 25-year-old stripper). And every damn time, I spend the whole flight trying to do Darth Vader’s telekinetic choking trick to the asshat parents who see nothing wrong with making everyone around them, including their beloved crotch-dropping, miserable.

Because the kids are suffering just as much as everyone else. Small children are physiologically incompatible with air travel, because their narrow Eustachian tubes make it very difficult for them to equalize the pressure in their ears. So they spend the entire flight in very real pain, and they communicate that pain to everyone around them, LOUDLY. They can’t help it, and it’s not their fault, though it can be amazingly difficult to remind yourself of that during the flight.

In this case, though, the plane didn’t even get in the air, and the kid was just a brat in dire need of a refresher course in the most important lesson of childhood, “Sit Down and Shut Up.” Her parents likewise seem to be in dire need of a refresher course in the most important lesson of parenthood, “Hit Them Where the Bruises Won’t Show.”

So I see absolutely nothing wrong with AirTran hauling the Kulesza (a Hungarian word meaning “douchebag”) family off of that plane. The only thing they did wrong was offering the family a set of roundtrip tickets in a lame attempt to make nice and avoid bad press. Instead, they should’ve jumped on the incident as a PR goldmine: “AirTran: We Don’t Take Any Shit.” Tell me that wouldn’t make an awesome corporate slogan. They could run it under a picture of a small child sitting inside one of those travel kennels that dogs fly in.

And please, if you’re reading this and you have little brats children, don’t take ‘em on a plane unless it’s absolutely necessary. Because one day I just might master that Darth Vader trick.