My 10-year-old hurt her knee today and I had to take her to the emergency room. We both took our masks with us because we knew we would be required to wear them in a medical facility, and so we suffered through it for the time it took to get an x-ray and a leg brace and get out of there. Afterward, I took her for McDonald’s to cheer her up. We went through the drive-thru and then sat by the lake in the park to eat.
After lunch, she had to go to the bathroom so I took her over to the public restroom at the park, where people have been using it for three months without masks or any security anywhere. Unfortunately, the beach had just opened and it was crawling with lifeguards and staff all of a sudden. Where I live (which will remain an undisclosed location in New York for my safety), this park has a very small beach that has always felt claustrophobic. They charge people money to sit on a small square of sand and swim in a lake that belongs to everyone. There is at least a mile of lakefront in this town that they deliberately blocked with giant boulders so you have to swim at the city beach and fork over cash to do it. It’s incredibly stupid.
Lockdown was blissful compared to the mask police
During the lockdown, when all government offices were closed, including the beach, everyone just swam off the rocks on the whole stretch of lakefront. It was glorious. But now the lake police are back and they are forcing people to use the city beach again. They get away with this by claiming it’s safer with lifeguards. The truth is, everyone hates lifeguards and all their rules; people are perfectly fine swimming at their own risk. The few weeks of freedom we had during lockdown were the best ever.
So it was in this newly opened beachfront scenario that we wandered over to the bathrooms expecting to be able to go in as normal. We had left our masks in the car because we don’t wear them outside. Governor Cuomo’s mask order specifically says masks are only required “when unable to socially distance.” We don’t have any trouble staying six feet away from people in a rural area like this, even in town.
But this day, there was a teenager posted outside the door of the bathrooms—which are mostly outside with fresh air blowing through the semi-structure—to ensure no one could come past him without a mask. He stopped us and told us we had to have masks. So I said, “Okay, she can put her t-shirt up over her nose since we left ours in the car.”
“Oh, no. That’s not an approved mask,” he said. Approved mask? I didn’t get the memo that said which masks were approved and which ones aren’t. The surgeon general said we could tie t-shirts around our heads.
Don't have a face covering? It's easy to make one at home with an old t-shirt, hand towel or bandana. Follow these easy steps 👇 and check out @CDCgov for written instructions: https://t.co/hgs4vtppL0 #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/K4SQ6V6Xbn
— U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) June 30, 2020
The mask I made for my daughter is made out of a t-shirt! What the heck is the difference between wearing a mask I made out of a t-shirt and pulling your t-shirt up over your nose?
Teen Mask Enforcer wasn’t convinced. Neither was his snarky supervisor, who didn’t care that a small child was in distress. They ordered us away and told us to go to the gas station which I declined to do because I didn’t know whether or not they would pull the same shenanigans. When you have a child who has to pee, it’s only a matter of time before things get messy. I may have said a few bad words to them on my way to plan B, which is very unlike me, but lately, I can’t seem to keep swear words from flying out of my mouth. Three months of lockdown followed by “WEAR THE DAMN MASK” without compassion or exception has broken my “polite” operating system.
As we were walking away, I noticed a man walking out of the men’s room without a mask on. So what’s the deal? You have to have one to walk past Teen Mask Enforcer but then it can come off? What the hell are we doing here? None of this makes any sense. It’s too bad I didn’t have spray-paint so I could have told my kid to go paint BLM all over the bathroom so she could use it without a hassle. I haven’t forgotten that riots and looting by thousands of people literally just happened and I didn’t see anyone upset about masking or social distancing. Medical professionals put out a letter encouraging the protests!
I rushed my kid back to the car and drove her to McDonald’s, where she was able to go to the bathroom while wearing her mask. But I hope the village idiots who decided that not even small children with full bladders can use the bathroom (even if they can cover their faces with a t-shirt) are at least a little ashamed of themselves. But I doubt they are because they’ve been told that people who aren’t wearing masks are bad people who don’t care about the sick or the dying. They’ve been led to believe there’s no legitimate reason a person can’t wear a mask, ignoring completely how many people suffer from anxiety, claustrophobia, or have other physical issues that might make it hard for them to wear a mask. They’re so convinced of this that they endlessly pontificate on social media about how wearing a mask shows love and consideration for your neighbor.
But what about the neighbor who forgot her mask? Screw her. That neighbor is garbage! See how this works? We only love the neighbors in the masks… not the ones without the masks. Those people are garbage and are now second-class citizens who can be denied any kind of service.
Add that to the ridiculous flip-flopping on this issue by the “professionals” who told us all NOT to wear masks before they told us we have to wear masks and you have a recipe for a complete breakdown of society. Keep it up, jerks. Denying children access to bathrooms isn’t heroic. It’s the result of brains deprived of oxygen. Welcome to Idiocracy. You live in it now.
And I’m sure all the mask-lovers in fits of loving their neighbor will say, “I’m glad they didn’t let you in, you disease vector!” as they parade their goodness and virtue among one another as if it is a sacrament of the faithful. “Just wear the mask!” they lovingly shout at the children crossing their legs in agony. I’m sure that will solve everything.
I’ll leave you with this excellent quote from the New England Journal of Medicine on whether or not medical professionals should do universal masking.
We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.
Y’all have done lost your minds.
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