Transportable Cocoons May Benefit Students

Danielle Martin

Staff Writer

There is no greater inconvenience than that horrendous moment when another homo sapiens walks past you a little too closely.

There’s that brush of air on the shoulder and as they go, you smell their shampoo.

Japanese cherry blossom.

What is this, 2001?

Now you’re contemplating era-appropriate hair hygiene and how long that bottle of Herbal Essence has been sitting on their bathroom shelf. 

That’s not what you intended to contemplate this day. No. Your paper proposal is due in forty-five minutes and you haven’t finished catching Pokémon in the courtyard.

Also, it took you extra long to park – another inconvenience of the surrounding populace – so you’re even more stressed about time.

Now you’re power walking down the sidewalk, trying not to be overrun by hooded figures behind glowing screens, your proposal is due in forty-three minutes and all you can think about is someone’s expired maintenance products of their follicle protein filament!

Also, can you walk any slower?

Unacceptable.

What we here need at ESU is something to protect us from the unnecessary amounts of shared air.

We need our own space.

We need… a transportable cocoon.

Yes, that is what we need. We do not need to look one another in the eye as fellow persons with our own complex narratives and agency.

We must always remember that surrounding hair-growers are unreachable beings that must be shunned and avoided.

This transportable – and might I add fashionable – cocoon would do more than cover people from head to toe.

It would be like a small but roomy bubble with enough room to use one’s phone or even a laptop if necessary.

What would make them really helpful is that not only could you avoid touch but also sight?

While you’d be able to see where you were headed, beings can only see your cocoon.

The material would act like a one-way mirror.

You can look out but no one can look in.

Also, you could live your life with more ease and comfort than ever before.

Within these lightweight, gossamer cocoons people can walk, talk, sit and do their business all with the safety of never having to come into physical, metaphysical or hypothetical contact with other hair-growing beings.

Afraid of catching the mumps?

Not a problem!

Worried about being inappropriately groped?

Not an issue.

In fact, this could reduce human interaction with 99%. (The other 1% is only for accepting lattes and packages from baristas and delivery people).

We might want our space, but we also want our coffee.

By blocking out this much human interaction, no one can offend you. 

They can’t see your skin color, weight, clothing style or hairdo.

They can’t even smell you. No one can ever look you up and down like a chewable morsel ever again.

Imagine how smoothly and untroubled your inner thoughts would roam.

The naysayers of that social media wasteland with their unchecked words and hostile, blatant racism would be stopped. There would be no more skin.

There would be only the shapeless shell of your cocoon.

Since no one can see you or be seen, you wouldn’t need to invest in any more body positivity posts. 

No more need for safe spaces.

And if this trend ascended to the federal level, this would even negate the targeting of politicians due to their ethnic background.

If a senator tweeted the illegitimacy of the Pearl Harbor attack – that some boats went pop one day – he couldn’t be targeted for his Kamikaze fighter pilot ancestors.

We would just deal with the text of his tweet at face value.

Or if you’re a cis-gendered middle-aged white man with a 401k who’s sick of hearing about microaggressions and casual misogyny when all you want to do is make kissy noises at the waitress walking by, you can do that.

Within the safety of your cocoon, no one will be able to hear your gross, sloppy, smooching sounds at her backside and comment on it.

Furthermore, we could have a noise-blocking feature!

This way if anyone was about to point out the flaws they saw in Bernie Sander’s ideas on free college for all, you could immediately flip a switch and the noise stops.

Just like that.

Because you know how well socialism worked out for the Soviet Union.

It’s brilliant.

The smoothness of your experience would be complete. No longer are you dependent on the unwanted involvement of others?

By completely blocking them out at any point in time you would find the rescue we all crave.

It would finally be protection.

This way, you could collect a Charizard without smelling someone’s age-old shampoo.

It’s just you, Pikachu and those thirty-eight minutes of proposal writing.

But that’s just my meager proposal.

Email Danielle at:

dmartin33@live.esu.edu