For those of you that don’t know, I’ve created the word “snnngt!” to represent the noise that a person makes when they suck in their boogers instead of blowing them out into a tissue. Think about it and try to match the noise to the action. Go ahead, I’ll wait… There you go. Keep that in mind until I explain why it is relevant below.

Some of you may have picked up that I take a class on Thursday nights at the local college. It’s a great class and, though it’s pretty long and thus exhausting, I do think that I’m making some good contacts and learning some interesting aspects of communication theory. But as you might expect, there is an certain aspect of this class that completely irritates the hell out of me – the person who I sit next to seems to be constantly sick!

It’s ridiculous! This woman sits there with a variety of crumpled up tissues and “snnngt!’s” all throughout the class! Then she coughs and hacks up a lung every once in a while. And after all of that, she lets out these long, exhausted breaths – think of the sound that, “Uuuuuhhhhhhhhh…” would make. It’s gross!

What the hell is wrong with some people? Look, I understand having to “suck in” the snot if there is no tissue around, but if you’re going to be sitting in a classroom (that is a SMALL classroom, by the way) you don’t have that option any more! You’re invading everyone else’s learning environment by constantly sucking in your goobers instead of blowing them out! And then to sit there and cough along with it? Really?!

Here we are in the midst of a nationwide discussion on whether or not we are going to be hammered by swine flu and part of that conversation is how college students need to be particularly aware of their health since the swine flu attacks younger people more harshly than older folks. And this woman comes to a class on a college campus hacking and wheezing and coughing up a lung? Seriously?!

Anyway, this unnecessary complication probably bothers me more than it does the other students in the class because she and I essentially share the same desk space so I’m right in the combat zone. It’s gross and it makes me want to vomit. The moral of the story is that you should not come to class if you are sick – stay home and e-mail the professor for the work, damn it.