All up and down the Pacific Coast, because of a recent lecture trip I took, there are the equivalent of wanted posters in hotels. They show two pleasant-faced women and two lovely little boys. The staff at each hotel must be trained to seek an intervention if they should see these individuals attempting to check in.

I don't think that children and hotels aren't made for each other. I don't think children and planes aren't made for each other.

I think that the PEOPLE who stay in hotels and fly on planes aren't made for each other. Either they don't have children, have children who are mute, or have forgotten how it was when they had young children.

Because they truly hate us. Truly hate us.

They hate us when we struggle down the aisles of planes with diaper bags.They hate us when we call room service for extra water to make baby bottles. They hate us when they have to change the sheets because someone urps. They hate us when we ask for one pancake instead of a short stack with a side of honey-maple ham and potatoes.

Now, sometimes they have reason to hate us. Sometime a kid has a grand-mal yell on a plane or in a hotel. It's annoying. But it's nowhere near so annoying to the person hearing the yell as it is to the parent of the child doing the yelling. We want to die. We want to grab out child and throw ourselves out at 30,000 feet.

The thing is, it seems that people believe we WANT our children to behave badly. That they're not as tired and bored and cramped as the people in the next seat and, unlike adults, they can't zone out and watch the movie or read about Branjolina in People magazine. They simply feel misery.

On one plane, we heard a woman ask her friend, in a voice clearly intended for us to hear, "What's the difference between a terrorist on a plane and a baby?" The friend waited for the answer.

"You can shoot the terrorist," she said.

We're a country who loves to sell things to children, make movies their parents will pay to take them to see and pretend to adore them. But unlike Italy or some other countries I've visited with my kids, we don't really want to be around them. We like the idea that we want no child left behind, when in fact, we want all children left behind, especially when we travel. We want them to be dipped in a plastic coating so that they remain clean and silent until they're big enough to make the kind of clever remarks the ladies made on the plane.

For to most people, children are like exercise. They're a great idea in concept.

Jackie Mitchard