One Thing or Another: Are We There Yet?

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

“Who was that masked man?”

– The Lone Ranger

I’ve learned the past year that it’s possible to forget what someone looks like without a mask, as well as to marvel at the face of someone I’ve never seen without one. In the grocery store where I work four days a week, masks have been omnipresent for over a year now, especially among those of use who work there, euphemistically called ‘associates.’

I wear a mask because I’m required to, and because I care about my community, my family, and bringing this all to some kind of end. But I don’t like it. In this case, ‘hate’ is not too strong a work. My glasses fog up. I breathe my own spittle. And I often wonder, as we enter the post-vaccination stage, how long we’ll have to keep wearing them, and how much of it is requirement and how much is conditioning. I imagine we’ll find out as states begin to eliminate mask mandates and companies follow suit. I will add, with emphasis, that not getting the flu last year was a big plus. Masks are uncomfortable and often annoying, but they have helped us minimize our contagious disease transmission to an amazing level.

Onward and outward, as the saying I just made up goes. Outward to restaurants where we’re dining inside again. Outward to malls and stores and, soon, a movie theater. Outward from the cocoons of physical distance and social isolation we’ve created and lived in for a year, with the urging of the Centers for Disease Control. Outward, too, from the fear that can still seem pervasive, with customers in the grocery store screeching to a halt if I walk too close to them.

The world we knew before the arrival of Covid-19 is not a world we will know again. We’ve become aware of the risks we pose to each other in ways that not even a severe flu season could achieve. We’ve also become more divided, if such a thing were possible (clearly it is), with the masked facing off against the un-masked, the vaccinated being appalled by the vaccine refusers who, in turn, think we’re too quick to let needles be stuck into us by people acting on the orders of a government they don’t trust.

As for me, I just want to wake up one day and find myself in a new normal, whatever that will be. I want to breathe without a cotton strap over my mouth and nose. I want to walk from a restaurant table to the men’s room without covering my face. I want to hug again (you can keep the handshakes, which I’ve never liked and that were super spreaders long before the coronavirus showed up). And I want to live again in a world where we aren’t afraid strangers will unknowingly put us on life support simply by breathing too close to where we stand.

We’re getting there. And, like my coming retirement, I can see ‘there’ in the distance, just over the horizon, coming toward me as I walk to meet it in the middle.

Mark McNease is the author of ten novels, two short story collections and miscellaneous fiction. He’s the editor of LGBTSr.com, “where age is embraced and life is celebrated.” He was the co-creator of the Emmy and Telly winning children’s program Into the Outdoors, and he currently co-hosts The Twist Podcast.