I’ve been doing a lot of air travel lately.  There once was a time when I considered airplane travel to be glamorous and exotic — mainly before I ever got on an airplane.

As a kid, air travel seemed an unattainable adventure.  We were people of modest means and my dad would sooner walk to a distant locale than fly (ostensibly because of cost, but also, I think, because he was intimidated by the idea).  The images on TV were of luxury travel with service by gorgeous women. Pretty much what has been re-created by Mad Men — what’s not to covet about that?  I had a friend whose family actually could afford a trip to Disneyland —  ON AN AIRPLANE!!! TO DISNEYLAND!!!  We could never do something like that – we were a car trip/cheap motel family.

Fast forward 40 years.  I now fly regularly – not as much as some, but enough to care what my SkyMiles status is (that’s shameful, isn’t it?).   If there ever was glamor, there is very little left.  As I eat my meager bag of complementary pretzels and sip my diet coke, I am very much aware that (probably for the better) flying has become an activity for the masses – thus, a bus on wings.  On a normal flight, one will meet and sit in personal-space-invading proximity to a large cross-section of humanity.

I’m not really a germophobe, but I have become acutely aware of people exhibiting symptoms on airlines.  There is nothing quite like feeling the impact of a sneeze on the back of one’s head.  If I don’t keep myself occupied, I listen for every cough or sneeze with the knowledge we will be breathing shared air for the duration of the flight.

On a recent flight, I there was a gentlemen a couple rows behind me with the kind of wet, loose, lung rattling cough that, in my mind could only mean tuberculosis.  He coughed up multiple lungs over the course of the 3 hour flight.

Worst was when Laura, our daughter Lisa, and I were flying to Europe for the wedding of Lisa’s high school best friend.  We were on a wide body plane in the middle, occupying 3 seats with a stranger next to Lisa in the fourth.  No sooner did we take off than the woman next to Lisa pulls out her barf bag and starts to heave, and heave, and heave.  Lisa the medical student leans in to help (apparently you’re supposed to do that as a doctor).  Laura and I were holding our breath and trying to will ourselves to the edge of the plane – ideally off it.  We had no sympathy and were distraught by our daughter’s altruistic reaction.

All we could think of was Norovirus – that dreaded intestinal bug that wracks one’s system until things want to come out both ends but there is nothing left to come out.  That would’ve put a bit of a damper on the wedding festivities.  Turns out we were fine, and Doctor Lisa ultimately diagnosed it as a severe case of too-much-partying-the-night-before-itis, but the rest of the plane ride was spent aware of every little gurgle or digestive imperfection.  We passed on the pretzels.