Well, sometimes the masks I get are bad. I've come to the conclusion that the boxes the masks come in have varying degrees of quality. Sometimes the masks are relatively small for my face, so when I stretch the loops to take it off (to drink, to blow my nose, etc.), they snap loose. If one does, it's almost certain that the next mask I get, which likely will come from the same box as the first one, will also be too small and also will snap. And they do. I have gone through half a dozen one morning.
And I am going through a similarly bad run as of late. I believe I had to get a new mask twice on Monday and twice one day last week. Yesterday/Wednesday was going to be different; it was going to be a day where the mask lasts the whole day (it usually does). But about an hour before I was done with work, I unhooked myself to finish off my coffee and snap! there went the loop of the mask.
And to be quite honest, my initial thought was: "Well, I'm only going to be here for an hour longer. I can go without it." But then common sense (as well as a pull to toward the routine) kicked in and I grabbed another mask. (It seemed larger than the one I had been wearing all day, for the record, so I'm guessing it came from a different box, a better one.) But that thought wasn't uncharacteristic of me as of late. I am getting mask fatigue.
I have resumed how I lived my life before the pandemic began: I go out to eat a lot and attend movies and concerts when I want (well, my previous blog posts about passing the Fleet Foxes show notwithstanding). I usually wear a mask, and quite often an N95 mask I have hoarded (and sometimes, at least for this hazy summer of smoke, a ventilated N95) over a surgical one, either one I have in my car or, if I'm going somewhere straight from work, the one I have been wearing at work. But I've been slipping. I have slipped my masks off indoors when eating or drinking something, and now, when I sit down to eat, I keep it off until I put it back on.
Lately I have stopped putting a mask on if I'm dashing into, say, a gas station to pay for gas. I have let my guard down for longer periods as of late, too; I watched Bullitt Monday night (and have I told you how much of a badass motherfucker Steve McQueen is?) and I kept my mask off after I got done eating my popcorn and drinking my Coke. Moveover, the past couple weeks I have become acutely aware that I am one of the vanishing few walking around with a mask on when I have been at, say, Target or the Mall Of America (I really felt awkward when I was at the latter Independence Day/Tuesday). I hate that I have allowed to creep into my head the thought: "Do other people think I look stupid still wearing a mask?"
I don't know if COVID-19 has reached an endemic phase. Maybe it's still a problem but The Media isn't covering it, so it's easy to dismiss now as a dark chapter in humanity's history that's finally behind us. But like I said, you never know if some chump coughing up a storm next to me while pushing past me on the concourse at Allianz Field (I know I'm going to lose my temper there again on Saturday) is spewing the 'Rona. Or the flu; that can still circulate during the summer. And heck, mask-wearing might come back into vogue in the winter months, when more people are cooped up indoors and the coronavirus won't be automatically vitiated by the outdoor air. But yes, I am catching myself slipping from mask-wearing. Some of it is risk I'm willing to accept. But I think some of it is me finally getting tired of a killer that might not be tired of me.
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