You know the Cough. You’ve heard it in class if you’re a student, or maybe at the movie theater, or, say, during a terribly long and boring financial training seminar for work. The Cough makes more frequent appearances in the winter, but it transcends seasons and places. It comes up in any situation that involves being trapped in a crowd of humanity, an echo chamber for bacteria. It’s a wet cough, guttural and toxic, and it sounds like snot covered gravel rattling around in a bowl. The kind that probably lingers for a week or even more. You can practically see the molecules of malaise, thick globules floating through the air, slowly but inexorably wending their way towards your throat and nasal passages. Despite being just fine seconds before the Cough, your throat begins to tickle. Someone else coughs and sets off an evil orchestra of cacoughphonous (sorry) death and disease.

The second I hear the cough, my brain goes through two diametrically opposed reactions. My first instinct is to cover my nose and mouth with either hand or sleeve (I try to be subtle and polite about it if the origin of the Cough is near), to limit the exposure of my immune system to nasty rogue bacteria or virii. It’s one part natural instinct, one part generic paranoia from my mother’s side and germophobia from my father’s.

The competing instinct kicks in a full second later - my brain goes into “oh no, oxygen supply limited, must breathe!” mode. Suddenly there’s not enough clean air available in the increasingly tainted supply, to be distributed evenly amongst the room’s inhabitants, and now I have two warring reptilian instincts going “stop breathing so deeply!” to “need more air!”- and I find myself breathing deeply behind the flimsy barrier of my sleeve, looking quite ridiculous to those around me, I’m sure.

Now I know, on an intellectual level, that no hand or sleeve can stop the germs from worming their way into my trachea (Reptile #2, luckily, does not). I know that if I’m stuck in a room with a bunch of Coughers, there’s not much I can do about it. And really, the stress probably taxes my immune system, ironically making me more vulnerable to catching whatever goopy illness floats my way. But no amount of reasoning, actual medical advice or common sense, will ever fully get my reptilian friends to back down.

How do you react to the Cough? What deep, irrational instincts motivate your bone-headed reptiles?