Yesterday I repeated history and went to Eataly and ate a slice of pizza with a napping baby after library baby time. I (dutifully? habitually?) wore a mask when entering and ordering, but once I sat down with the pizza I of course removed it. I then wondered why exactly I was wearing it to begin with, and walked through a store without one. After all, my family and I already had covid (but not so long ago as to be reinfected, probably???), and the store was filled with old and cautious-seeming sorts without masks on. Why would I wear one for this but not that? Just to remember what it was like, I put some groceries in a basket without a mask on. Then I got to the checkout, saw that the cashiers in this case (not always so in the store, or in general) were masked, put mine back on, and… I have no idea. What am I doing? What is anyone?
Later in the afternoon was a parent-including event at the daycare. We all briefly went inside, unmasked. The following day, an email about a new covid case in my child’s class. Was it a reinfection, given that basically the whole class already had it? Or a straggler? Is there some way to find this out? Does it matter? Does anything?
I did wear a mask on transit, as I always do. I asked a man getting into an elevator with me (stroller necessitates) if he’d put his on, which was probably unnecessary, and definitely a mistake as it elicited a “Fuck you, bitch.”
Why do people get on the bus only to wear their mask around their chins? Why a mask just over the nose? (A woman outside smoking a cigarette with this arrangement, odd but question answers itself. A man at the airport, truly who knows.) People who pull the masks down to sneeze or blow their noses. Noses uncovered. No mask but hand sanitizer and/or latex gloves. Clear plastic face shields, visor-style and molded to some or all of the face. So many possibilities.
Did I mention that when we all got covid it was during the blip when the daycare mandated masking?
I remember being furious at non-masked people on transit initially, and reassured by masked ones, and then it emerged that the cloth masks are pointless. Ours are in a time capsule ziplock bag in the basement.
I recently did get on a streetcar maskless, out of it from having been on a subway car (had to flee it) with someone more murderous-seeming than usual. Pandemic public transit anyhow. I noticed and put one on. Whatever.