There’s this weird thing where if a person feels a cough coming on, they put their fist in front of their mouth and cough on it. I don’t know who started it, but I know it has to stop.

You know what I mean, because everyone knows someone who does it. When they feel a cough coming on they make a fist and expel their germs all over it, entirely unaware that air can flow around an object or to the side because of it, which can get the people next to them sick. Yeah, simple physics applies to the air displaced by coughing, as well.

Then they proceed to get their freshly germ-covered sausage fingers all over utensils, door handles, and just about anything else that they can touch.

The reason why these people upset me is because I don’t want to get sick too. Slowing the spread of disease is a community effort, requiring the cooperation of everyone. If one person holds on to some health myth that results in the spread of a communicable disease, that could be all it takes to get the rest of the people around them sick, even if everyone else exercises the proper precautions. For example, it was believed that the measles was wiped out, but it resurfaced, thanks to the anti-vaxxers for stubbornly clinging to the false notion that vaccines cause autism. A few people decided to fail in their human duty to use their brains to the benefit of society, and the whole collective was punished for it. Thanks, pinheads.

It’s almost as though there’s some weird cult out there that believes in ritualistically forming a fist and placing it in front of their mouths when coughing as a means to make themselves better and gain the approval of some magic coughing leprechauns. Who knows? Maybe there is some weird fist-coughing cult. Notice how people do this as though conditioned to do so from childhood? There’s the evidence of a cult, right there.

And if there is such a cult, it probably holds to other tenets, as well. They probably invented this whole “small talk” thing, which conditions people into feeling as though they need acknowledgement of their existence from everyone that they see, including random strangers that they pass in hallways. Or it could be that that stems from being conceited. I don’t know. But if it is some weird cult, that would give me another group to beat up in my fantasies. Such as Emos.

Now that I went and posted this, some people from this cult are going to read it, and then get so angry about it, that they gather together in one of their assemblies to discuss what to do about it. Then they decide on some weird kind of sorcery that bears a striking resemblance to square dancing. It doesn’t have any effect on anything, but they convince themselves that it does, then they go on to play some shuffleboard, and they’ll go right on coughing on their fists, not aware of how ridiculous it makes them look.