Editor’s Note: We’re digging into our ample archives to find some great articles you might have missed over the years. This one comes from 2014.

Never did I think the person holding a screaming baby on a cross-country flight taking off at 5:30 a.m. would be me.

Yet there I was, returning to New York City with body odor ripening as my deodorant quickly vanished under the stress of what would be the flight from hell.

Ah, the joys of flying with your baby.

“Why me, God? What did I do to deserve this?” I thought while people searched for their seats and visibly prayed it wasn’t next to this dude with a 1-year-old screaming for freedom from his Baby Bjorn.

When the couple sitting next to me realized they were stuck with us, I apologized in an attempt to win some sympathy. It didn’t work. All I got in return was a look of disapproval.

After everyone buckled in and the lights dimmed for the takeoff of our five-hour flight, I followed our pediatrician’s advice and gave my son an eight-ounce bottle of milk. It was the first time since I woke him at 4 a.m. that he was silent. During those brief 10 minutes, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and calmed down.

It was then I realized nobody was going to say anything to my face and, besides, who cares what other people are thinking? If someone said something about me and my caterwauling baby son it would made them look like an ass. We were simply trying to get home.

Once I calmed down I could feel my son, who was strapped facing forward on my chest, fall asleep. I took another deep breath, closed my eyes, and slept for about an hour.

That’s when I had to use the bathroom.

The screaming baby airplane bathroom blues

When I closed the bathroom door the only thing I was thankful for was that I am not claustrophobic. Have airplane bathrooms shrunk? Maneuvering inside such a small space with a 22-pound kid strapped to you is like doing yoga inside a box.

My first option was to take my son out and place him on the floor while I peed. That thought went down the toilet when I looked down and saw water. And probably worse.

The second option: pee with him still strapped on. I hate to admit it but this wasn’t the first time I’ve done this. So how bad could it be?

I had to maneuver around to avoid peeing all over my son. Wailing soon ensued and my nerves shot through the low, slanted roof as I attempted to relieve myself. I was astonished that I managed to shoot in the right direction. “Damn I’m good,” I thought as I zipped up.

Now, time to change my screaming baby boy.

As I searched aimlessly around the small space for a changing table, I started to think I was still half-asleep. I splashed some water in my face to try and snap out of it. After another fruitless attempt, I opened the door to ask the flight attendant for help.

“This particular plane doesn’t have baby changing tables,” he said.

I closed the door, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. All I have to do is be quick about this, I thought. Piece of cake.

I took my son out of the Baby Bjorn and turned him toward me. “Sorry. There is no changing table so we’re going to have to do this old school on the toilet,” I said. I hugged him, placed the changing pad on the toilet lid then placed him on top. He had this look on his face of “what the hell are you doing to me?” that reminded me of Stewie from Family Guy.

Then he slipped off the toilet seat.

I imagined people in the last 10 rows of the plane hearing his screeching and thinking the worst. Sweat dripped from my forehead while I got him off the pee-covered floor. I cursed United Airlines.

After finally changing my son, I looked at myself squarely in the mirror and vowed out loud to myself, “Never again will I fly alone with my child.”

I know one thing is for sure, next time I see a father flying alone with a screaming baby I will go out of my way to say hello, tell him what my experience was like, and offer whatever assistance I can.

Photo: © Irina Schmidt / Adobe Stock.

This doesn’t concern world peace or anything philosophical like reincarnation but I find myself asking this question every time this dad is out in New York City with my son:

Who has the right of way: an older person or a child, in particular someone like me lugging around a 2-year-old who refuses to walk or sit in the stroller?

Lately, my son doesn’t want to walk so I end up carrying him for blocks at a time. As you can imagine, schlepping around a 35-pound child is getting my arm in shape for the Ultimate Arm-wrestling League. Anyway, when I approach an intersection and on the other side is some cute, little old lady who looks like the slightest breeze will knock her down I always think to myself, “Get out of the way, grandma. Heavy load coming through and I’m not stopping for nobody.”

The conundrum I have is this: Do I show respect for the fragile, but experienced, old lady by letting her go first, or forge ahead and blast right by? If I let her go first, it means a possible two-minute wait while holding in my arms a future linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.

Another example of this war of transportation woes waged against parents is on New York City’s MTA buses and subway trains. All have signs asking for you to give up your seat to the elderly. I would argue my son is more deserving of that seat rather than some old person that reeks of urine. At least my son is cute and smiles at everyone while taking a poop in his diaper. Those old farts cussing under their breathe as their dentures cling on for dear life are a public nuisance by taking so long to get on the bus in the first place. C’mon, granny — get on already. I got a toddler here who is about to lose his mind because it’s way past his nap time.

I find some solace in the subway. Seriously, when was the last time you saw an old person taking the train in NYC? I’ll tell you: never. They are too busy slowing down the above-ground transit system. The subway still isn’t perfect because, well — “manspreading.”

These affronts to personal space won’t even acknowledge anyone is even interested in sitting next to them. Dude! I’m the father with the screaming toddler because he doesn’t want to wear two layers of clothes to fend off single-digit temperatures, so don’t be surprised if I give you a death stare that would scare gang members into thinking, “Whoa, that guy looks pissed.” Damn right I’m pissed! Now, let me sit down and calm down my son for crying out loud.

But nooooo! I have to stand holding a squirming bowling ball that is wailing into my ear. My only hope is that my hearing gets completely shot so I don’t have to deal with that sound anymore or the crappy music bleeding out of the man-spreader’s headphones.

I know I can’t win this war. Which is why I tend to stay within walking distance of home when out with the boy. If I do end up downtown, I have some “safe houses” to go to (thank you, Blue Bottle and Stumptown coffee). However, maybe if we parents all band together to help each other out when stressed on the bus or subway we can somehow make commuting in this rat race a little better.

Who am I kidding? I need to get the hell out of here.

I reached out recently to a fellow father I met through the NYC Dads Group to see if he and his kid wanted to hang out with us at a local playground. The reply I received knocked me on my ass.

He told me he had moved out of NYC and that his wife and he were now separated.

DAMN!

The reason I decided to participate in the NYC Dads Group was to feel like I wasn’t alone and, all of the sudden, I now felt like I let a fellow father down.

If only I had reached out more. If only I had felt comfortable in my own skin as a new father, and as a stay-at-home dad just like my fellow brother, my friend, maybe … just maybe … he would have been able to work things out with his wife.

Who am I kidding? I probably wouldn’t have helped them out a bit but, damn, I would have tried. That’s what a friend should do.

I’m not gonna hold any punches here: I was married once before. I know the pain that it puts on a dude. No matter how much you try to show you aren’t bothered by it, the more it hurts.

Being a new father — no matter what your age, social or economic status is — we are all going through the same challenges in this modern-day revolution of what being a father means. Our better half may be jealous that we “get to spend all our time” with the little monkey while they only get two hours. A single parent may feel completely overwhelmed time-wise and financially. A same sex couple may feel uneasy from societal tendencies but in the end, we are all the same. It takes a village to raise a child and here in NYC the task sometimes feels more restricted due to the insufferable amount of single people, maybe that’s why so many people leave the city once a child enters into the equation.

We have an advantage here at the NYC Dads Group: each other.

I’m not always happy to venture out to Queens, Brooklyn or the far ends of Manhattan but every time I do I am happy to talk with other men just like me going through the same thing.

I do not bring home the bacon and that hurts. I wish I did. Then again, I wouldn’t be able to spend the formidable years with my son who I never really thought I would want in my life. Now that is all I care about.

I try to learn every day from my wife and son and I can honestly say that I am a better man.

Moral of the story: Get out of your skin and make a new friend. It maybe awkward at first but it just might help that other person if you stop thinking about yourself for once.

One thing I find interesting about having a child is how a mundane event, such as doing the laundry, can turn into a pediatric emergency room visit.

I’ve learned doing laundry in an apartment building with an 18-month-old is a great way to tire a kid out. My son enjoys running down the hallway, taking the elevator, pushing all the buttons, and saying hello to anyone he meets. After my little helper goes back and forth to the laundry room a few times, he’s wiped out. By the time I’m finally folding the clothes on our bed, I just let my son lay down and play with the pillow covers.

Watching him there, my mind relaxed and I enjoyed the moment. Then he leaped up, threw a cover over his head and proceeded to flip off the corner of the bed a la Greg Louganis.

I quickly picked him up in an attempt to ease the pain but, as he always does when it hurts really bad, he held his breath in the middle of a big cry. I thought to myself, no big deal.

But then he passed out. Just — boom.

Um! Oh shit!

He quickly snapped out of it, but the little dude definitely just passed out in the middle of crying.

He continued to cry as I held him and finally fell asleep on me. Instead of laying him down in the crib I held him and slept a little also. When I awoke he was still asleep on me but not for much longer: The sitter was arriving soon and I had to get ready for work.

I could tell there was something not right with him but couldn’t put my finger on it. I told the sitter what had happened and to keep an eye out for trouble. I was running late for work now and calling my wife before I left was not what I wanted to do and, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have since she proceeded to freak out. She promptly left work to take our son to the pediatric emergency room while took off for my job.

Soon I was clear across town with a dilemma: let my wife take care of the situation on her own or be with my family.

I chose the latter.

When I showed up at the pediatric emergency room, our son looked fine, but my wife had been waiting for an hour to see someone and that didn’t help calm frayed nerves.

One glaring takeaway from this experience was that when they finally saw our son, the doctors and nurses all asked my wife the questions. Nobody once asked me what happened until my wife mentioned she wasn’t there during the backflip, I was. When are people going to realize the mother isn’t always the person around the child? But I digress.

An hour turned into two and when our son was wheeled into a room for a CT scan. I gave up trying to tell everyone they were taking this a little too far. I really didn’t like it when the doctors gave my son some medicine to make him forget what was happening. That was the freakiest part of the entire night because my son was out of it. He looked dazed and exhausted.

We didn’t get home until 10 that night and all we could do was feed the boy and put him to sleep. What rocked my already fragile ego as a good parent was when my wife jokingly said, “Well, if he has problems later we know it’s from you letting him do a back flip off the bed.”

Ouch! That hurts.

For the past nine years I have lived in Manhattan from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side to Midtown East, back to the Upper East. However, a sky-high rent increase finally made my wife and I look to the more suburban outer-boroughs.

We found a huge two-bedroom in Forest Hills and, since I had a friend of mine I’ve known for 15 years out there, we decided to give it a shot.

The first weekend in our new suburban neighborhood shocked us.

I should have taken a clue that maybe moving to Forest Hills wasn’t such a good idea when I ventured out the first Friday night alone only to see police taping off a huge part of Queens Boulevard. When I asked an older man what had happened, he told me that a lady was hit and killed by a car. He proceeded to tell me that the street is infamously known as “The Boulevard of Death.”

We had to contend with not having a grocery store or a drug store around the corner. The apartment sat within shouting distance to a busy intersection with cars screaming off the Grand Central Parkway. Depending on the winds the planes arriving and leaving LaGuardia flew right over us, making the apartment even louder.

My year-old son loved pointing up at the airplanes. He also started mimicking the siren sounds from the very loud and obnoxious Hatzolah volunteer ambulances regularly screaming through the neighborhood.

What really put the dagger in our suburban dream was our landlord. He did not want to fix anything in the apartment. He didn’t bat an eyelash when I told him that the fire department came due to a gas leak that we had been smelling for four days. Nor did he care that the bathroom sink started to fall off the wall while brushing my teeth. When I told him that I was more than happy to do any repairs and deduct it off the rent he quickly broke our lease and offered to give us back our full deposit.

The only two positive things that came out of our Forest Hills adventure was spending time with my good friend and meeting our Forest Hills dads for drinks.

If I didn’t reach out to the other dads in Forest Hills I would have felt more alone than I did. My fellow fathers are helpful, friendly and are going through the same experiences as me.

We are not alone, even though the suburban moms at the playgrounds in Forest Hills make you feel unwanted, there are good dads around. I, for one, will be reaching out a little more to say hello to my band of brothers anywhere they reside.

My wife wanted to sign up our son for Gymboree Play & Music classes because, as she put it, “Why is one of my mommy friend’s children walking at the same age as our son?”

Oh, God, here we go.

The NYC parent competition thing that I’ve heard so much about. I said to her, “I have two words for you: ‘Who cares!’ He will walk when he is ready.”

Nonetheless, there I was at Gymboree – my first introduction to parenting hell. I was taken aback, however, by how cute the woman was at the front desk. This might not be so bad after all.

Then she showed me where I could park my stroller. Yes. Park. Really? People say “park your stroller”?

Then I had to take off my shoes so I didn’t track in any contaminants. What is this: a high-safety ward at NYU Langone Medical Center? Oh well, at least I wore socks without holes.

I carried my son over the childproof fence and stepped into what looked like a padded psych ward designed by Dr. Seuss. But my son was all smiles, cooing and pupils as wide as a snowboarder arriving at the mountain to find two feet of fresh powder. Pure heavenly bliss.

Another attractive woman came over, gently singing for all of us baby-toting adults to gather in a circle. Her singing confused me. At first, I thought she was just goofing around, but then I realized that singing is all she does. Did I miss something? The wife didn’t mention I was going to an off-Broadway musical.

Then things changed. I saw the climbing obstacles. These are great. Who wouldn’t enjoy crawling under and over something soft and padded? Now I know why obstacle course races have become so popular with adults.

Each obstacle works out the baby’s balance and encourages walking. Then comes the picking up of foam shapes to “mingle” with the other babies. Most of the time, all kids do is put the foam shapes in their mouths and babble at each other, which is pretty funny. Even witnessed some hair-pulling, but it’s all good clean fun. For the most part, though, this is not the place you want to be if you’re hungover after watching a Seahawks nail-biting win.

One of my son’s favorite Gymboree obstacles was the long inflatable log that all the babies sat on top of with the parents holding the kid by the waist to work out their child’s balance and hips. Everyone stood behind their baby but I didn’t pay attention and sat in front of mine. He loved it, laughing hysterically with every bounce. I could feel that my smile was so big.

For that brief moment, I didn’t think about being the only dude in class. I didn’t care that my life had come to this. I was having fun watching my son have fun. I am a papa, a father, a dad.

I must have been beaming with joy because I felt someone staring at me. When I looked up two of the moms were looking at me. I couldn’t figure out why they were looking at me. “Yeah, baby. These chicks are checking me out. I still got game,” I thought.

After a Gymbo the Clown appearance, the songs wound down and the mothers gossiped one last time. I went over to put my son back in his stroller and put on my shoes. That’s when I noticed.

The zip fly in my jeans was wide open.

Those Gymboree moms were not checking me out after all. I was the idiot who almost let the horse out of the barn.

Editor’s note: The month-long residency of street artist Banksy in New York caused quite a sensation among the people of the Big Apple. NYC Dad Brandon Garcia and his son created a commotion of their own when they recently tried to check out one of his  spray art creations.

What could possible go wrong if I decided to strap on the Baby Bjorn and venture from the Upper Eastside to West 24th Street to see the new Banksy art.

What the hell was I thinking? Seriously? I should have known better. My 10-month-old son had sucked down 6 ounces of formula and ate 3.5 ounces of some fruit mix after his mid-morning hour long nap. I thought I was safe. I changed his diaper and looked out the window and saw no clouds in the sky, a nice blue mid-60’s day in the city which was as tempting as a mermaid inviting you to go swimming. Let’s rock.

I was shocked by how quickly I was out the door with him hanging on the front of me. Walking to 86th Street for a quick ride on the express train to Grand Central was brisk but the fact that my son now weighs around 20 pounds, give or take, turns the simple task of walking into a workout. Oh well I thought, at least its nice outside.

Stairs, stairs and more stairs awaited me at 86th Street then again at Grand Central. How a handicapped person moves around this city is beyond me. While I walked the long corridor to the shuttle train my thighs and calves began to burn. Damn! This is more of a workout than I thought it was going to be. More stairs between the shuttle and the 1 train.

I was exhausted and thirsty by the time I got back to street level at 23rd street so my first stop was a Duane Reade for some Gatorade. I opened and downed it at the register.

The kid ringing me up said, “That looks like quite the workout?”

I replied, “Yeah and I’m coming down from the Upper East Side. I’m already beat.”

The kid laughed, “Have a nice day.” Stepping out to the bright sunshine I thought to myself maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t such a good idea. Screw it, onward.

The corner of 24th & 10th is one loud clusterfuck filled with ear-piercing traffic horns, a repair station for NYC cabs complete with more honking and yelling, trucks supplying cement to a construction site and tourists gawking at the dude wearing a baby walking down the street. I naively thought that maybe amongst all this mess nobody cared about the Banksy art.

Nope… UGH! About 75 people were clamoring over each other to take pictures. No worries. I have my son strapped to my body for safety, meaning I don’t have to worry about pissing people off with my stroller. Perfect way to see art, right? RIGHT?

The two paintings, graffiti or whatever you want to call them, were hanging from the Highline and cordoned off to appear like a makeshift outdoor museum. People could wait to see the art up close and enjoy refreshments but I was five to seven rows of people back from the yellow tape. No problem, I have the kid strapped to my front and seriously how long could it take?

Right about the time I thought I could do this a large concrete mixing truck arrived and honked a bull horn at all the people looking at the Banksy. My son was scared out of his mind and began screaming.

Then some guy looking like he was in charge of the construction site began yelling at people to get out of the way. While calming my son down I moved closer to the throng of people hoping to get into the hipster art bliss.

Out of nowhere a 20-something girl in front of me yelled, “OUCH.” She turned and gave me the dirtiest look, like I had just groped her in midst of all this madness. I smiled nervously and said to anyone listening, “Okay? Not sure what that was about.”

All I could do was use this to inch my way closer. I realized at this point I needed to back away from all the commotion to calm my son down. As I backed out of the scrum I realized that my son was clenching his left fist.

“Benjamin. What is that,” I said as I walked away. It was none other than a wad of hair that he plucked from the girl. “Oh God. It’s time to go.”

See all the Banksy art installments from October on www.banksyny.com.