You've got to feel bad for the Atkins family of Texas. Andy, wife Jenny and 4-year-old son Logan must have had high hopes for their Carribean getaway: Some sun, some fun ... a little relaxation at the very least. One thing vacations aren't supposed to be is stressful. Or at any rate, they're not supposed to be more stressful than real life.

And they're definitely not supposed to be more dangerous.

Except after you hear about what happened to the Atkins, you might never think of a tropical family vacay in quite the same way ...

City planner Alyse Nelson wrote a post yesterday about how she about died of embarrassment the first time she rode the bus with her son. The bus driver had the audacity to tell her to fold her stroller before coming on board! The rest of the post is all about how this rule discourages people from riding the bus, and wouldn't it be nice if we could be more like Copenhagen, where their aircraft-carrier-sized buses allow un-folded strollers and priority seating for parents of tots. 

Is this for real? This complaint, I mean, not Copenhagen. Lord have mercy. In all my years of riding the bus all over Brooklyn, where we have the same rule, I've only seen a certain type of privileged, entitled parents complain about having to fold up their strollers. I know getting around a city with a toddler can feel like an acrobatic feat. I lived it! And you know what? Then my kid got older and life went on.

Well, well, well. Francesco Schettino, captain of the doomed Costa Concordia, is changing his tune. Though he initially claimed the fatal crash was not his fault, Schettino now admits to making a "navigational mistake" which caused the cruise liner to crash into the shore of the rocky Tuscan island of Giglio.

Quite a switch from his original story, in which the captain made a daring U-turn to avoid uncharted rocks, saving "hundreds if not thousands" of lives in the process. Indeed, Schettino painted himself as quite the hero. Abandon ship? Nah, not him.

You can't blame a guy for accidentally tripping on deck and falling overbard ... right into a lifeboat!

(Seriously? And what did Captain Curly slip on, a banana peel?)

There's no way around the fact that Schettino's error killed (at least) 11 of his passengers. But the fact that his immediate reaction was to not only refuse the blame but pretend he did something brave makes his crime even more reprehensible.

What are we going to do with these wild-west cowboys? California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly got detained at the airport for trying to bring a Colt .45 loaded with four rounds in his carry-on bag onto an airplane. From his office today, he offered a simple explanation: "When I arrived at the security check point, X-ray machines revealed that I had forgotten to remove a gun from my carry-on luggage." Oh, why he just plum forgot! Or, as Rick Perry would say, "Oops!"

Riiiiight. I forget things in my bag all the time, too. Of course, it's usually something like earphones or a magazine. Unlike Donnelly, I'm not an outspoken advocate for gun rights. And I don't even own a slingshot. (But if I did, I would definitely not pack it in my carry-on.) So what do I know of the travails of a gun-totin' Assemblyman? Still, I think when you "accidentally" leave a gun in your carry-on bag, you obviously have a problem.

Not to sound overly critical, but for the past year or so, I've thought of the TSA as an oppressive, drunk-with-power regime out to make my travel experience a torturous nightmare. That all changed today, when I took a look at the TSA's Top 10 Good Catches of 2011. Yikes! No wonder the TSA is so jumpy ... people try to take some seriously scary items on airplanes!

I guess I just assumed, all this time, that the average traveler didn't generally try to smuggle things like land mines in their carry-on bags. You know, that folks already under FBI surveillance were the ones who usually attempted those types of stunts.

Dear TSA, I was wrong. I'm sorry. I don't care how invasive and thorough my next pat-down is, as long as it keeps this stuff from ending up in the overheard compartment ...

Marine Corps gunner Ryan Jerome was just trying to make sure his firearm was properly stowed and all safety protocols followed when he visited the Empire State Building and asked where he should check his gun.

Jerome, who has a concealed carry permit in Indiana, was arrested and faces up to 15 years in prison for his ‘crime’ of responsibility. Even if he is indicted by a grand jury, the bare minimum prison sentence is two years. “They couldn’t even offer less if they wanted to,” said Jerome’s attorney Mark Bederow.

There is something people without kids must know about what it's like to be a parent and fly with children: It's hell. You think it's annoying for you when our kid cries or kicks your seat, but you have no idea how much stress it is just to get through security with the stroller and the car seats and the coats and the breast milk being eyed by TSA or the formula being questioned and the tantrum at the candy counter all before we even board the plane. The sound of our kid's cries are louder for us, because we don't want them to be so upset, and truly don't want to make a scene and upset all our fellow passengers.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's talk about Kathy and Jason Fickes, parents of a 3-year-old, almost 2-year-old twins, and an 8-month-old, who got kicked off a US AIrways flight as they were trying to get home to Chicago from Charlotte, NC, for the holidays. Yes, kicked off the flight.

What do we all hate about traveling over the holidays? It's expensive to fly the whole family, and it's a huge pain in the tookus to keep all the little ones reasonably quiet and unharmed through the flight. Oh, if only there were a magic spell that could shrink down the kiddies to Lego-man size so we could just stow them quietly in our carry-on luggage!

Okay, I'm just kidding. But one family's attempt to get around the expense of flying is almost as ridiculous. Two parents bought just three airline tickets for a family of six. Since three of their kids qualify as "lap infants," they figured those kids could all just fly free. So you're picturing that older, fourth child as a teenager, right? Nope. Their oldest is 3 years old. Are you as confused as I am?