Some of the people who spend time in my field of view are such colorful characters that they demand formal documentation, much like Darwin upon discovery of a new species in the Gálapagos.

I once saw a lost mariner drowning in the disorientation that is solid land. Thin, small, middle-aged and unshaven, he scampered aimlessly, light-footed, and unbalanced, like Gollum. Wrapped round his neck hung a flickering strobe light, nicely juxtaposed by the well-lit building interior he occupied. While all of the aforementioned was visually interesting, it was perhaps outdone auditorily by the soundtrack to schizophrenia emanating from a short-wave radio he wore on his jacket: a repeating, static-riddled weather transmission “20 knot winds..kshh…80 nautical miles Northeast of Kodiak..kshh.” He shouted gibberish into a phone that probably wasn’t listening.

Coughing or sneezing in the vicinity of tens of sitting strangers begets more of the same from them. Lecture and concert halls are particularly vulnerable settings. When a period of audience silence is broken by a single nose/throat disturbance, one or two others in the audience usually follow suit, domino-like, in a reaction that on the surface mirrors the contagiousness of yawning. But where yawning is largely out of one’s control and is motivated by some biological need, coughs or throat clearing that are 2nd or 3rd in a series are usually imparted onto the crowd on account of a primitive, petty consideration, as if to say “My respiratory tract air discharge is louder and more disruptive than yours, bitch.” Thus, the source of the last outburst in a series is the silverback gorilla and dominates, until an irritated throat emboldens a lesser audience member to threaten the hierarchy. Importantly, there are two unspoken rules that limit the amount of disturbance an audience will tolerate.

1. The first disruption must be legitimate, as from an allergy or cold.
2. Back and forth battles are not allowed, any audience member wanting to show their stuff has only one opportunity to shine within a single disturbance series.

Movie theaters offer an interesting twist: the breaking of audience silence may be initiated by a character in the film. For example, when I saw The Road, several audience members felt their dominance threatened by the pneumonic father character’s coughing fits.