I tuned it out for a few hours but now I think I understand why the CDC is so worried about H1N1. Heck, I think they should be worried about a lot more than that. I have been flying across the country today and I think I have heard every cough. In fact, I think it is more notable when 10-15 seconds go by when someone doesn’t cough. And that is just the airborne stuff. Ugg, all the touches and wipes and smears. I think I could become Howard Hughes quickly. Well, not the money and swagger and genius part..but I could wear tissue paper boxes on my feet pretty soon if this keeps up.
That is just physical infirmity. When I landed in Phoenix I think I saw plenty of the mental kind as well. It is 8:30 in the morning and people are running around in full sprints. The wide-eyed fear that they would somehow be trapped in the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks if they didn’t run like Ben Johnson. Others twisting in circles, unsure of which way to go as a stream of more confident passengers navigate around them.
Then other questions come up. On the plane they will not offer you much for free these days, but US Air was letting us have coffee or soda. If you felt like spending 5 bucks for a bag of chips they’ll do that too. But back to the drinks. When did human beings get so darn picky? If you believe in evolution (and not everyone does), you are basically saying that certain traits lead to survivability. I don’t think whining about food would have helped. Some lady a few rows up completely jammed the beverage service with a prosecutorial line of questions about their de-caf coffee which is apparently more like a tea bag and not brewed. After careful consideration and what seemed like a committee meeting on the matter she gave it a whirl. Did her ancestors hem and haw about how well their squirrel meat was cooked or which mastodon was for dinner? Nope, we learned this sort of thing. And it gets worse by the day. It is the reason I like In and Out Burger. There are 5 things on the menu, though people do their darnedest to slow the drive thru down despite the simplicity of it.
I guess what I am saying is that air travel is more like an experiment than anything. You can check the how viral something is, watch sociology ad psychology in action and all while experiencing modern avionics.
Since I started writing this I have coughed twice and sneezed once.
