Who was that masked man or woman?
Just the other day, I was thinking about the current state of affairs regarding people’s resistance to wearing masks. I shook my head and chuckled. How could they be so stupid? Maybe they’re just uninformed or just downright off their rockers not to see the importance of protecting themselves or others.
When I see news reports from some far off state where people are claiming they are only exerting their God-given right as Americans to do as they please, I first laugh and say, “You a**holes are killing people.” Then I gather myself and say, “Wait a minute, remember that in March and early April I was one of those idiots.”
I am not sure which one, Moe, maybe Larry, or Curly, but yours truly was a real Stooge about COVID-19 and the importance of wearing a d*** mask. I was not alone. Some of my good friends still share the view that the virus and deaths can be avoided by just eating right, boosting their immune systems, and connecting to some kind of metaphysical power without the need to wear a mask. I wanted so much to buy into all that. But as I look back now, I think, “What a crock, what the hell was wrong with my brain?”
In fact, the problem was I didn’t really think at all — and not in the least about other people’s safety. It sounded good not to have to conform and I just picked it up and ran with it.
I have spent my time the last several years searching for human kindness everywhere and writing about my experiences in the “Random Acts of Kindness” series. But here I was being a hard core resister to wearing a mask of any kind. Because I was a long-time vegetarian and in decent health considering my age, I even made jokes about those who did wear them. I was like one of those friends that you can’t seem to understand how they could align themselves with a wild conspiracy theory or, worse yet, a political demagogue.
When it came to masks, I was just as big a nut job as those we may make fun of for supporting 45. I just thought it was much to do about nothing. What was the big deal? I spent considerable time thinking and crunching the numbers, figuring out the probability of me actually being infected with COVID-19, I determined my chances were miniscule. The odds, so I thought were long. They just didn’t worry me. This was absurd considering I’ve never gotten better than a C in any science or math course my entire life.
I took to attacking the “wimps” who I said felt they had to wear masks because they were afraid of not being politically correct. And I boasted on social media of not wearing one myself and I felt invincible. And I thought science was in my favor and I held running emotionally charged chats with several friends who immediately understood the importance of mask wearing. I strongly rebuffed their attempts to reprogram me from the nonsense I’d been listening to and took a real beating on a particular social media platform where some even publicly called me selfish and dangerous to myself and the others.
But even that didn’t stop me. For a while, I purposely went out without a mask and would photograph myself out and about town with others who held similar beliefs about masks to demonstrate that it wasn’t all that serious. Dumb had found dumber.
And to piss off some of my social media friends when I visited places I would post about how nobody was wearing them or that I only saw this or that percentage of people in a mask. I traveled to West Virginia and North Carolina by car during the early spikes, where mask wearing was not as widespread as now. I stopped in big-box stores where less than half of the workers and shoppers had masks on. I even complained about the inconveniences of social distancing in the restaurants and stores along the way. I was totally out of touch with the awesome power of this virus to take lives even mine. I realize now that not wearing a mask today is like having unprotected sex during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Just stupid.
The source of my incorrect information was not so much from some outside influence but from right in between my ears, my own thinking. But on a day in mid-April, things began to happen to wake me up. A social media “friend” became frustrated with me and said these important words: “You fool: your age, race, and health makes you a prime candidate for coming down with COVID-19.” His statement hit home when people I had known or known of started to die. (A friend of 40 years is battling for his life as I write this.)
This metamorphosis all started when a college friend mentioned that one of our teammates had passed. “You didn’t know?” he said.
“Was he sick?,” I asked.”I thought he had stayed in pretty good shape, much better than me, and was still playing ball.”
His response shook my fantasy world at the core and challenged my assumption that I can beat this threat all by myself without taking any recommendations from medical professionals. Now mind you, I have several friends who were physicians or who work in related healthcare positions among those who tried to school me.
Looking back, I am so ashamed and embarrassed by my ignorant stance, my actions, and the possibility of putting others in harm’s way. I’ve asked the universe over and over for forgiveness and readily admit how wrong and off-base I was. It’s as if some aliens came down, beamed me up to their spaceship and somehow got control of my brain. That’s the only logical explanation I can think of now that I am better educated about the virus.
So stop laughing and shaking your heads at me and walk with me though my journey to exercising some plain old common sense and becoming responsible about masks and preventing the spread of COVID-19.
The first death I heard about didn’t shake me that much because I hadn’t seen him in decades and we weren’t that close, even back then. I was thinking that maybe he wasn’t eating right or was practicing some unhealthy behaviors. So I ignored this first warning that I could also lose my life. As I started to get my head out of the sand the shock that sent me reeling was the death of someone very close to me. Doesn’t it always happen that way? Some of us are in serious denial until it hits close to home.
That second death was someone I’d worked with over the years in the opioid wars to save the lives of people who were suffering from substance abuse disorders. He had mentored me and given me great advice and guidance on my career moves and my personal recovery. If there was a person who could withstand the complications from any virus, surely it would be my friend who looked like an NFL lineman at 6’5” and over 350 lbs. But one day, as I strolled through a social media platform after having not spoken to him in a while (which was not unusual), I noticed people repeatedly posting, “RIP Mr. [So-and-so].” Surely they were talking about another with the same name, right? I started to reach out to mutual friends and what I found rocked my foundation of delusions. “This can’t be true,” I thought. “We had just attended a 12-step meeting together a little over a month ago.” But it was true and he was gone in just a few weeks. His death set me off on a new course of action, as did hearing about others I casually knew who also died from COVID-19.
All of a sudden, the numbers I had crunched weren’t looking so good and the danger was getting closer to me. I started to worry. But how could I make a u-turn now, after all the wise-a** remarks I had made and my talk of a hoax? My ego was in the way of me saving my life.
First, I dropped out of sight on that social media platform and just hid out in my apartment literally from March to July. Street Sense Media had stopped publishing its print edition, so I only left my home for an hour of “seniors-only” grocery shopping each Tuesday morning. I watched no TV news or network shows — only movies, mostly documentaries. I threw myself into my secret hobby: bird watching and feeding them from the many feeders hanging from my balcony railings. Watching nature and those birds helped me to see things differently. Just like helping the birds, I realized I had a part to play in the fight to save lives from COVID-19. But I strongly felt I needed to make a public mea culpa to convince others of the power of wearing a mask.
Then it came to me that a simple way to repay all the kindness shown me was to just wear a mask. It was required when working the paper but I started wearing one at all times and everywhere, even when going down to the lobby to check my mailbox. Then I was hired to do homeless street outreach for a social services agency. Suddenly I became a mask-wearing zealot, reminding people to wear their mask and encouraging those wearing them to wear them properly. I also promoted social distancing, which is now defined as 6 to 8 feet between people.
In my community, on a daily basis, I witness people wearing their mask incorrectly: under their noses, just wrapped around their necks, none at all, or only putting one on just before entering a business and as soon as they hit the door it’s right back off. They are just like me in those early months.
I have on several occasions asked to speak with a store’s manager to inquire why their employees were preparing food with their noses exposed, as if you sneeze through your month, Or why they allowed customers to be noncompliant in their establishments. Sadly, I can now see the correlation between reluctance to wear masks and the high rates of infections in some communities.
After becoming a member of the Mask Police, I started to notice something I had not been paying attention to previously. I recall now that part of my attitude towards masks was that they made everyone wearing one look like a reject from some low-budget TV hospital show. They were just boring and a long way from cool or hip. But when masses of people started to surrender to wearing them, little by little they turned them into these beautiful works of art. Right away I was smitten by the bright colors, fashionable designs, and clever messages.“Where did you get that?” I would ask.
Then things really took off when so many people started to make their own. I was at the markets craning my neck from side to side as shoppers passed by in the most creative and cool face coverings. I was fascinated by the style and panache. At first, I would follow people around to get a closer look before asking questions, which led to asking for permission to take a photo of their mask.
Once, as I drove down a street in Bowie, I saw a lady walking with an unbelievably beautiful array of colors in her mask. I pulled over, jumped out, and ran to catch up and ask her to take a photo. But I forgot to think how it may have come across to the poor frightened woman with me running towards her, so she started to speed up. After showing her the other photos, she let me take her picture and asked, “What are you going to do with them?”
At that time, I was just a collector and would show friends how cool some were. But the collection got so big that I ran out of storage and had to change cell phones three times as I became more obsessed with taking pictures of other people’s masks.
There was a logical reason: they were wearing colors and combinations I could never think of wearing because of a disorder I have and manage well that forces me to dress only in solid colors. If you’ve known me for a while and think about it, you’ve never seen me in stripes, plaids, or any patterns. Maybe a logo at times, but rarely. It’s because — and I am admitting this for the first time publicly — I am just like the famed fictional detective Adrian Monk. We suffer from some of the same severe obsessive and compulsive disorders. Just ask my closest friends who’ve had to put up with me. So I just envied those colorful coverings. But through your wonderful photos you’ve allowed me to take, I am able to finally experience this phenomenon myself.
Someone suggested as I showed my collection to people that it may have some value in not only making mask-wearing fun but chronicling what we went through in a year like no other. Someone even suggested the Smithsonian might have interest. That’s when this picture taking thing took on a life of it’s own and consumed me.
One day after sharing what I was doing, someone asked what my “project” was called. “Project, yeah, what could I call this?” I thought. So I started to count the number of masks I’d photographed and there were hundreds. Out of nowhere, I made the impulsive goal of 1,000 photos. Mainly because of my disorder, I only feel comfortable with round numbers and things being balanced. So 1,000 it was.
How was I to know I may have bitten off more than I could chew? I thought it would only take a week or two to reach that number. But once again, your “C” math and science student was way off. I’ve been taking mask photos for over three months now and suffering from mask fatigue, as celebrities often say. I may need a mask photo rehab stay when this is all over. I just had no idea what getting 1,000 photos would involve. All because of the ring of “a thousand,” I was trapped. Would “The 450 Masks of COVID-19” have the same punch? Of course not. So it was settled, the project would be “1000 Masks of COVID-19.”
As I continued to obsess over masks, I thought about how the fictional superheroes in my childhood and adolescence almost always wore masks. I can remember going up the block to my grandmother’s house, who had the extended family’s first color set, to watch Batman and Green Hornet save the world from multiple villains and disasters. Then there were the old Saturday standards, Zorro and the Lone Ranger, always saving the day while wearing masks.
So, the answer to my opening question is you and me when we practice the most important Non-Random Act of Kindness of our time: just wearing a mask. When we do, we join the ranks of those long-ago childhood superheroes who always arrived just in time, in a mask, to save the day.
Visit www.1000masksofcovid-19.com to see the entire collection of photos and learn how you can help. Maybe you’ll see yourself or others you know saving lives.
