In the good ole days of air travel, hot meals were served at no additional fee. There were feature films to enjoy with free headphones. And the pillows and blankies were always plentiful. What an enjoyable and restful way to travel!

Nowadays, commercial flying is an entirely different experience. You have to arrive at the gate so far in advance that you could probably drive to your location faster.

Headphones are no longer free, meals aren't either, or even available on some airlines, and I have not been able to find a pillow or blankie in years.

The most obvious change is the boarding process. Arriving at the airport days prior to scheduled take-off is preferred. Being groped by a gloved stranger is managed like Russian Roulette. Having your bags examined by different gloved strangers is like walking into your house that has been ransacked by burglars, except that at the airport they do it right in front of you.

Traveling by air recently, I made the mistake of wearing flip flops. My shoes and socks were in my carry-on bag. I thought it would be easier to walk through the metal detector in flip flops. Not the way it works at Security; all shoes come off. When I realized what was happening, I couldn't get to my socks. Now I had to walk through the metal detector barefoot. That was a first — and a last. One word comes to mind: Ewww.

It was dinnertime so we stopped to eat before finding our boarding gate. If we didn't eat, one of us would have become so overwhelmingly hungry while in flight that he would have gnawed his own arm. That would be my 15-year old eating machine, Alex.

After dinner, we set out to find a restroom. Getting to the boarding gate is a time-consuming process for my family. Alex and I went to our respective bathrooms while my husband, John, stayed with the bags. Alex came out first, so John went in immediately following. I joined Alex.

"Mom, there was a pedophile in the bathroom," Alex said.

"What happened?"

"I was using one of the urinals and this man walked in and spit in the urinal next to mine. There were other open urinals, but he came over next to me. He put his hands on his hips while going to the bathroom, which I thought was really weird," said Alex.

"Did he say anything to you?"

"No," Alex said.

Before I could continue my line of questioning John emerged from the restroom.

"Dad, I think there's a p…"

John cut Alex off, by putting a hand up and saying:

"I know Alex; I'm calling."

"How do you know what number to call?" I asked.

"There's a number listed on the wall," said my hero-husband.

"Alex, your dad will handle it," I assured him.

I was not convinced that the man in the bathroom was a pedophile, but because of John's reaction I thought that he had seen something. According to Alex, the man was still in the bathroom.

Alex and I stopped talking to listen to John on the phone with security. Being in the presence of a dad-hero, we paid close attention.

"Hello, I'd like to report that there are no paper towels in Bathroom M84. Yes, that's correct, M84 has no paper towels," John explained.

John got off the phone and told us that he had to wipe his hands on his jeans. Well, we can't have that, can we?

As I stood there staring in total disbelief at my husband, the man-in-question exited the bathroom and wandered away. Nothing actually happened to Alex; he just learned about bathroom spitting and hands-on-hips. I was already exhausted and we hadn't even found our boarding gate. I could really use a blankie and a pillow on this flight.

And what about Bathroom M84? Thanks to the amazingly fast response of my wonder-husband, the paper towels were restocked by airport security in no time.