It started slowly. Around here they started popping up – one here, one there – sometime in March. Most people did not immediately grasp the long-term possibilities of what they were seeing. That is understandable. There is still no solid consensus among the world’s doctors, scientists and political leaders as to how long it will last.
This is not about the Covid-19 virus or the threat it represents to our world. It is about the masks that people wear to avoid becoming infected. Frankly, I mistakenly viewed the face coverings with at least mild derision at first, as did many others. They smacked, to me, of an attitude resembling: “I don’t care how objectionable and self-serving it appears, the bottom line is that it’s me first and I am not in this with you.”
The masks, often referred to as personal protective equipment or PPE, conjured up in my mind a scenario of passengers in a crowded and damaged airplane falling from the sky. Three passengers have brought along their own parachutes and seem to wear them as “masks” of superiority as they strut down the aisle toward the door that opens to the safety of the clear blue yonder.
Okay, the parachute metaphor may be stretching it a bit. Whether it does or not doesn’t matter much. The pandemic is driving home a basic reality for me. It’s that a strong sense of self-preservation, however unbecoming, has served us well – at least since the days of the saber-toothed tiger.
Upshot is this, I relented and bought myself a mask, a real doozy, blue on one side reversible to a white background with small blue polka dots on the reverse. I was too self-conscious to wear it in public for at least a week.
Finally, one day after some socially distanced shopping, I donned the mask whilst waiting on a bench for a trolley ride home. My sense of hot sweaty-faced safety did not last long. A young man driving a fantastically camouflaged car stopped in front of me. I assumed he was waiting to turn left toward the supermarket and I continued to admire the paint job. Within seconds my art appreciation headed south in an astounding way.
The driver leaned toward his open passenger window, only feet from me, and screamed in an impossibly loud voice, “That disease is bullshit!” He emphasized this by slamming his open palm on the empty passenger seat.
Instantly I found myself wondering if I was going to have to defend myself from a much younger, obviously very strong and perhaps insane individual. Then just as abruptly he leaned back under the steering wheel, sat there a few seconds and then sped away.
I certainly cannot say my mask repelled the threat of violent attack. In fact, it may have almost caused one, albeit by a seemingly crazed young man. Having once been a crazed young man myself I can’t properly look harshly upon this idiot. If he doesn’t first fetch up dead or in prison, then time may soften his anger toward strangers. In the meantime, I can only wish him the greatest possible social distancing, especially from me.
For someone who started off thumbing his bare nose at the facial filters l have come around almost 360 degrees. Not long ago while riding the trolley an unmasked woman two seats ahead of me let loose with a really loud deep-chest cough. I cringed. Instantly my fingers were in my shirt pocket fishing out my trusty mask. I had foolishly boarded the trolley not wearing the covering, but I stepped off with a face shielded from nose to chin in little blue polka dots.
As I strode away from the carriage, I couldn’t help imagining an old codger on horseback asking a companion in a quietly perplexed voice, “Who was that masked man?”
David Frank Dempsey