... she was down to do it. I could tell. Girls have subtle signs they offer savvy men. A slightly raised eyebrow, a faint narrowing of the eyes, a single index finger driven repeatedly through an "O" created by the thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand. Some guys don't get it, but I do. I get sex, and I know when someone wants to have it on top of me.

Just two knocks, spaced apart like a heartbeat, and the lavatory door slowly folded open like a metal labia, revealing the most intimate part of the plane. She was already inside, smoking a cigarette, the smoke detector torn from the ceiling and in pieces in the sink.

"That's a federal crime," I said.

"You think humans learned to fly living by the rules?"

"That's not a logical analogy."

"I'm illogical," she said. "I'm ill everything."

"Gross," I said.

"Shut the door," she said, stubbing out her cigarette in the upturned alarm. "And take your pants off."

Twelve minutes later, both of us collapsed into one another, hot, sweaty and still panting with exertion. My pants were finally off.

"Kind of tight, isn't it?" I said, correctly.

That sign was really misleading.

She caught her breath, then tried and failed at several different crouching attempts. Finally she sat on the toilet, realized that didn't feel right and stood again while putting one foot up on the sink with a "this will have to do" face.

"Rad," I told her with my face, and with my voice.

Movements were limited to the confines of the space -- thrusting was out of the question. Instead we stood against one another and resigned ourselves to twitches. The soap dispenser dripped down my back with every spasm. Twice the toilet flushed, sensually. Then it was over.

"It's over," I said.

"Oh. OK," she nodded and glanced at her cellphone, which she hadn't even bothered switching to airplane mode. Who was this outlaw? "One minute and 53 seconds," she said, like that was a time she had never heard of in her entire life. I explained that technically we had crossed a time zone so it was actually an hour, one minute and 53 seconds, which, if my calculations were right, was a long time for sex. "You're welcome, 24B. Please kick me my pants when you've fully recovered. No rush."

"Rad," her face said, or seemed to say. I don't know. Women make a lot of weird faces ...

... and if your child is an aspiring athlete, check out the world famous National Softball Hall of Fame Museum. It's filled with memorabilia from everybody's favorite professional sport, like the glove of beloved pitcher for the '57 Raybestos Brakettes Joan Joyce. Or enjoy the expression on your children's faces when they finally get to see the bat Dot Richardson used in 1984 to hit a triple in a league game against an unspecified team!

Next, pop over to the American Banjo Museum for an adventure in silence! The banjos can't be strummed or handled, but just looking at them behind glass cases will fill your child's imagination with all the great sounds they must have made at some point. Give your kids lasting memories they can relive over and over in the halls of this hallowed museum.

At last, when your children are exhausted with the thrill of acquired cultural knowledge, you can take them back to one of the many three-and-a-half-star hotels all over Oklahoma City and have a long talk about how torture can take many forms. To one person, it may be a series of museums dedicated to agonizingly boring subjects, and to another it may be sitting in the seat directly in front of a child on a completely full flight from New York to Oklahoma while he/she kicks the seat repeatedly and cries inconsolably when the Nintendo DS runs out of batteries.

Remember this agony. Remember it forever.

Neither suffering is any greater than the other, but we have to do what we can in life to ease that suffering in others. Maybe then, with the pain of the day still looming, that little prick will finally understand ...

Cosmic radiation is about 64 times greater in a transcontinental flight than it is on the ground, which means that, in terms of cost vs. reward, racking up frequent flyer miles is on par with collecting Camel points from cigarette cartons. To put it in context, frequent flyers are exposed to even more radiation than most radiation workers and they have no idea.

For a better understanding of why, here is an exhaustive and detailed description of how the radiation is seeping into your skin right now and there's nothing you can do about it ...