Compulsively chatty airline passengers and fat movieplex customers who load up on junk food like squirrels getting ready for a long winter — I can’t decide which I despise more.

I’ve cumulatively stood for days (if you consider all my years of going to airports since I was 18) watching airline passengers go up to the initial check-in ticket counter and then proceed to yap-yap-yap with the airline rep for eight or ten or twelve minutes or more. About what?, I’m always wondering. They’ve bought the ticket and their luggage is tagged — what could there be to discuss? And yet they do it every time. Perhaps it’s because some people are nervous about flying and they just want to feel comforted by a friendly voice. Of course, the idea that they’re making others wait in line much longer than necessary never occurs to them. Why should it?

I’ve stared with amazement at Target-dressed, pudgy-bodied moviegoers who go up to the candy counter and buy a couple of extra-large buckets of popcorn, two or three supersize Cokes, trays of nachos with cheese and jalapenos, hot dogs with mustard and relish and an extra-large pack of red licorice, and then load it all onto a couple of carboard trays. Watching this tends to bring about feelings of nausea, of course. On top of the fact that ordering and paying for all this crap takes almost as much time as the yap-yappers at the airport.