Wear Your Mask Begrudgingly Like A Pouty 2-Year-Old

A quick disclaimer: I am not a scientist and I'm more than willing to let science get in the way of my hack-kneed opinions.

I want to give you permission to not like face masks and to wear them when necessary but when doing so, begrudgingly like a pouty 2-year-old just this side of throwing a tantrum. I have a feeling that I am not alone in my sentiments about a world filled with covered faces.

When you see a store full of masked customers and staff, feel sad. Be mad. Be annoyed. Shake your head in disgust with the COVID-19 virus, the world, the country, the states and cities, and the powers-that-be, all angling to make political hay out of an international pandemic. Grumble at the media outlets as they parse out information that suits their position instead of doing what news should do—objectively report facts.

What I’m saying here is that you are not required to jump on a bandwagon of face mask cheerleaders. You're only supposed to wear it, not like it!

After the mayor of my home suburb implemented a citywide order that masks be worn inside virtually all buildings, I sat in the parking lot of the grocery store for 15 minutes summoning the will to leave the car with a mask looped over my ears. I felt so self-conscious and awkward—which of course made no sense because everybody in the store would be masked.

I do have a couple of physical issues that make wearing a mask more of an ordeal. Enough general anxiety to add an invisible but very real personal hurdle. I also have compromised hearing. Muffled voices combined with the inability to “see” the words being spoken is positively exhausting. I become frustrated quickly. However, I always let that be my problem, not a problem for others.

While you are not required to become the star mask booster on your block, you also should not be shamed or bullied into hopping onboard.

Don’t buy the specious argument that requiring face masks inside restaurants and stores is the same as requiring pants, shoes and shirts. It’s not the same. Our faces are our identity. Communication—verbal and non-verbal—is primarily transmitted via our faces. A quick glance at someone’s unmasked face discloses far more than a person’s bare feet. Though, I will concede that one strolling around sans pants definitely says a lot about that person.

Don’t feel guilty about exploring your city or town and safely interacting with other people, or fooled into believing that an afternoon at a loosely populated park or beach or sitting at a sparsely tabled outdoor café is tantamount to pinning passersby to the ground and violently hacking virus-rich sputum down their throats. It’s not.

The people screaming and posting that anyone not wearing a mask constantly each time they leave home is criminal or violent sound just as irrational as the people that continue to believe the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax.

Participate in life. Go outside. Get your work done. Buy your groceries. Support local businesses when and however you can because many are struggling to survive.

At the same time, don’t be that jerk in the restaurant who pitches a fit about having to put on a mask to walk indoors to and from the washroom, or the jackass in a big box store yelling about personal freedom and the Constitution. The workers don’t need your nonsense and the other patrons want to get out the door and move on with their lives—most of them itching just as badly as you to liberate their faces and breath free the moment they leave the building.

And, do you really want your worst behavior memorialized forever on social media? Because that’s where your tirade will land, if not also elevated to a segment on the national news.

This entire pandemic is awful. It’s depressing. It has at least caused disruption in the lives of millions of people and at worst destroyed the physical, financial and emotional lives of millions. People dying of COVID-19 is really just the half of it! That will become very clear in the upcoming months and years, I’m sure.

For reasons that befit an entirely separate essay, this pandemic has become yet another of many recent and historical social, political and philosophical fault lines. It is easy to get all tribal and take horizontally opposed positions solely on the basis of your voting history or the fact that the illness has not directly affected you.

Our freedom to disagree without burning the entire system to the ground—um, as of yet—is a feature, not a bug of our country.

Hash it all out with your friends, family, neighbors and enemies, and political representatives. Maybe you’ll teach somebody something, and maybe you’ll even learn something—unless of course you argue via social media. Nobody’s mind has ever been changed by a Twitter tweet or a Facebook post or comment.

BUT, and this is a BIG BUT...

Wear the darn masks when and where it is not just required but also the smart, healthy and considerate thing to do. If the worst thing that happens is that you feel grumpy and perhaps even mad as all get out, but maybe just maybe you prevented the virus to spread to just one other person, you’ve done a good thing.