The guy across the aisle has driven my wife mad. He’s typing on his laptop like a man fighting with the buttons on an elevator–he’s pushing every key with a kind of life vs. death forcefulness. Connie has fled to the next car, so unbearable is this dude’s telegraphic desperation. The problem is that now I’m aware of it. And the dude, who is now my dude, also has some dread form of sinusitis so he makes a sporadic noise like a whale at an arctic breathing hole. Meantime the prevailing temperature in the rail car is around 80 degrees. You can smell the deodorant of the other passengers. The only bright spot is that there’s no wailing baby in this car. Not that I’m against wailing babies–they have human rights that are equal to everyone else’s and by God I’m no 1% snob. Hell, I don’t even mind smelling other people’s deodorant, it’s better than riding a train in some parts of Europe. You know what I mean…
I knew a guy in college who had the same kind of sinus squeak as the dude with the computer. The guy in college wound up having his own floor in the library.
Planet of the Blind 