3 May 2020
It’s hard to keep up.
What was hep is hackneyed.
What was groovy is gay.
What was boss is bogus.
Face masks, on occasion and under special circumstances, are medically prudent. (I recall wearing a surgical mask when I first met my daughter, a twenty-nine week fetus delivered prematurely and with dire prospects. She is presently a hale and happy twenty-nine year old woman with wide open prospects.) In addition to being occasionally effective health aids, face masks are presently groovy, sick, and with it. But how does this new fad compare to the soy muffin, sagging trousers, backward ballcaps, or clown shoes on pick-up trucks? Well, those things are all pretty silly too, but they’re harmless. None of them offers the subterfuge that concealing one’s features does. Like wearing sunglasses at a poker game, covering half your face, and thereby half-blinding most of us from important social cues and the hearing impaired from additional verbal clarity, is discourteous, and potentially underhanded. We will be generally less inclined to trust you or to like you.
Of course, if you take to displaying the skid marks on your skivvies, or hang a canvas scrotum from the back of your pick-up, we may not be amused either, but we probably won’t think you’re here to rob the bank. And whatever happened to the “Safety Pin?” (PoundPinNotSafe?) That pointy threatening object is/was as dangerous as guns, pencils, cars, and diverse opinions.