The Cougher

On a recent flight I took, there was a woman seated in the row ahead of me. She was not directly in front of me, but in front of my partner. She was with her husband, a large man whom I took issue with soon after the flight left for reasons I will share in another entry. She was coughing. In fact, she coughed throughout the flight. This bothered me not so much for the noise, but for the fact that she coughed freely. She made no precautionary effort to cover her mouth. She coughed openly and freely, as much as a gifted orator would shift his head triumphantly from the left to the right as he spoke to a large crowd. “Hear my words!” he said, fist raised. “Hear my cough,” she thought, her hands resting comfortably in her lap. I should mention that I think this is ludicrous. There was a baby one row ahead of them, and baby or not, no one on that plane wanted this lady’s germs. Maybe she knew she wasn’t sick, and she had a dry cough. No matter. Coughing openly as she did clearly is spreading her personal vapors off her person and into the air that you and I too have to breathe. Out of courtesy for fellow man, she could have covered her mouth with a hand, with a kerchief, or better yet, she could have triumphantly coughed into the closed chasm of her elbow-pit. Not impressed, ma’am.