I’m sure there are people who would be annoyed that someone was BREATHING next to them, and not just someone who had eaten an onion-and-horseradish sandwich before taking off.

I hope I end up seated next to one on my next flight — I’ll eat a burrito before boarding the plane.

my point was really about being a lavatory-going nuisance to other fliers.

People actually get annoyed because their fellow passengers have bodily functions? Jeez.

(Not the same “Yellow River” as the one invoked in that nifty 1970 record by Jeff Christie. And not this Jeff Christie, either.)

I spend a lot of time flying and I have a lot of good ideas about how to make flights more tolerable, one of which is to segregate seating for the pee-ers and the non-pee-ers. Then the pee-ers can jump up and down for the whole flight and annoy only their own kind while the more self-possessed non-pee-ers can remain undisturbed.

If the airlines charged an extra 15 bucks for this kind of preferred seating, it could generate revenue and pull the the airline industry back into the black. I’d pay it.

I don’t know from clots, but I do know that if I’m driving and enough time has passed, I might pretend to need a pit stop just to get up and move around a little. Staying belted into a glorified child-safety seat on a long flight? Surely you jest.

That said, I forgive you if you don’t even want to be in the same section of the plane with me when I take a 10 to 12 hour flight to China or Malaysia.

Sadly, that seems to be another thing my early 40s are taking from me.

(And it’s a LOT harder running into that situation while doing fieldwork while female, at least compared to what my male colleagues have talked about.)