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home whether they’re sick or well, and I can’t argue with that. But what I do take issue with is when the breathing cadaver in the seat behind me coughs and coughs and coughs hard enough that I feel his lung g-force hit my head and it makes MY HAIR MOVE. That cough had the wind-tunnel action of a Dyson and was easily strong enough to push-start us down the runway. And it was grotesquely apparent from the unmuffled sounds that the coughs had been released with reckless abandon—there had clearly been no obstacle to their discharge into the world. The man behind me was an open-mouthed cougher. No hand action to shield the rest of us from the germ cloud rushing from deep within his lungs—not even a Kleenex to provide a thin, flimsy barrier.
    To make matters worse, he wasn’t the only one; the plane was full of them. And I don’t get this; I mean, really, where are these people when Dr. Gupta says it again and again on every news show, “To help prevent the spread of disease, wash your hands, cover your mouth, and stop blowing your nose on your Tommy Bahama shirt”? Do they not get the Discovery Health Channel? Did they not know of Holly’s plight? Who are these open-mouthed coughers? In which dark corner of society do they live? These people, I assume, must be these the same ones who leave pee on toilet seats and let gum simply fall out of their mouths onto the sidewalk. Being sick is not like e-mail—you don’t need to spread it around to a hundred people to have the gods shine on you or get better. Keep your death rattle at home, I say, because I don’t want it. In fact, I think making people stay at home when they’re contagious should become a national policy. Sickness has the same properties as people who look at porn on the Internet. Keep it where it belongs, in private. No one wants to know your secret, and no one wants a visual.
    For some people, however, that might not even be enough. For repeat offenders, for all of those selfish people who continually cough and sneeze on others when they’re sick, I believe we need a quarantine unit set up. If you simply can’t manage to raise your hand six inches to cover your gaping cavern of illness, go ahead and skip that step. But the next time you commit that offense it will be in a whole roomful of renegade nose-blowers and other open-mouthed coughers just like you who can infect each other repeatedly instead of contaminating the healthy population. If you sneeze once or twice, well, that happens, but more than that, it’s the sickroom for you. And when you’re quarantined, you’re quarantined. There will be a special sick restroom, complete with receptacles in which to dispose of your snot rags properly, like a bonfire, and yes, there will be excessive pee on the seats. And, so the sick can eat, there will be a sick vending machine, outfitted with already contaminated buttons.
    And it was during that flight from Phoenix back to Eugene that I made myself a promise: I would never, ever, let myself be that exposed in a such a turbulent atmosphere again without recourse, showered continuously with microscopic particles of infection just searching for a new orifice to invade and set up shop.
    I spent the rest of that flight with my napkin acting as my sad interpretation of a SARS mask, covering my nostrils as best it could from the germ shower being shot at the back of my head, and when I got home, I did the only thing I could do: I went online and bought two cartons of bird-flu masks. And then, several days later, I came down with a cold that quickly turned into pneumonia and made my lungs crackle like a bag of Tostitos being danced on every time I took a breath.
    And with the memories of the Christmas flight and the two weeks I spent in bed crackling, I did not feel one bit bad, weird, or overreactive as I looked at the woman sitting next to me as she open-mouthed coughed on me one last time, then reached into my purse and prepared to snap that bird-flu mask