If you know that answer to the above question you’re dating yourself. That’s what folks would ask after being rescued or being the recipient of some other good deed done by the Lone Ranger. In the early ’50s, this white-hat wearing, white horse-riding dude was the man, of course accompanied by his “faithful Indian companion Tonto.” Boy, those were the good ’ol MAGA days!
However, masks have taken on an entirely new context since mid-March. I recall the first time I entered a business wearing a mask. I would choose a tool outlet store in Parma for my first masked outing. When I got to the register, purchases and credit card in hand, the smiling young white clerk wisecracked, “So, are we about to get robbed?”
Now I could have thrown a bitch-fit over the young man’s obvious racism, but instead I said, “No, but you guys do need to be shot in the ass for the prices you’re charging for some of this cheap shit.” Had he not been smiling when he made his remark there’s no telling what my response might have been.
Nonetheless, we’re now living in a new day and time. I’m just waiting for some enterprising young person to come up with some utilitarian purpose for all of the billions upon billions of leftover masks once the pandemic has passed. Perhaps make them parachutes for guinea pigs; never mind that guinea pigs don’t need parachutes, since when has that stopped American ingenuity from selling us shit we don’t need? It’s all about the marketing, baby.
I can predict some people — devoid of any real meaning or purpose in their lives — collecting masks like Beanie Babies. They’ll host conventions where prizes will be handed out in various categories: A trophy for the person with the most masks, another for the most unusual mask, and still another for the team that laid the most masks end to end. To what purpose I have no idea, other than what British mountainer George Mallory allegedly said about why he attempted to climb Mount Everest, “Because it’s there.”
To some small extent I can identify with the “anti-maskers,” but not enough to go out and about without one. I’m not that crazy. They feel, with some degree of accuracy, the government is turning our country into a nanny state, trying to berate us into eating our collective broccoli. And to a degree it’s working since increasingly you can see people driving down the street, alone in their vehicle, wearing a mask. Protecting against what — who?
But no doubt the pandemic is causing mental changes. A few days ago I noticed I had a slight temperature and a stuffy nose. Prior to Covid 19 I would have just squirted some Zicam up my nostrils and thought nothing of it. But for a moment (actually more like a couple of hours until it the symptoms subsided), I lightweight panicked. Hey, I was raised by a hypochondriac, what can I say?
Since I do the family shopping and am in and out of supermarkets (albeit far less often than during pre-pandemic times), I immediately did my own bit of contact tracing. I thought of the idiot I avoided at Dave’s who wore his mask under his chin like a beard. Had I spotted and avoided this cluck in time? Then I thought of my daughter, who had recently come down with the virus and recovered from it with relative ease. Could I have contracted it by talking on the phone to her three times a day?
OK, OK, go ahead and laugh. But if you start coming down with a case of the sniffles … then you’ll understand.
