Friday, August 6, 2021

It wasn’t ‘Give me liberty AND give me death!’

La Jeune Fille et la Mort, by Marianne Stokes (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)

     No, I did not wear a mask when I stepped into the Goodman Theatre lobby Monday evening. Yes, I had read the explicit instructions in their email earlier that day.
     “Remember that face coverings are required for all patrons attending the performance, regardless of vaccination status. We will provide a mask if someone in your party is in need.”
     Why? The usual selfishness that greases our slide through life. I got my vaccination in April. So I’m OK. Besides, you never know how strict such instructions are. An actual, bar-you-at-the-door requirement, like the Lyric Opera’s iron rule that if you arrive 10 seconds past curtain you have to stand there like an idiot, watching a monitor? Or mere cover-your-butt legalese winked at by those in the know?
     I grasped it was the former when a polite young man intercepted me three steps through the door, offering a basket of paper masks. I apologized, fumbling for the familiar lump in my pocket. I had brought my own, just in case.
     Why not? I shovel the sidewalk in front of my house, use my turn signal, all the usual concessions to being part of a community. I can do a mask, too. Though I am human, and don’t like being inconvenienced. Sitting in the theater beforehand, it occurred to me that once the play starts, I could slip my mask down in the darkness and nobody would be the wiser.
     “All patrons must wear a mask before, during and after the performance,” a voice announced. Twice.
     Darn, I thought.
     I didn’t fear that if I slipped the mask under my nose, someone would hit me with a handheld spotlight, the way Blue Man Group shamed patrons slipping into the theater after the show began while a voice boomed “Late! LATE! LAAAAAAATE!!!”

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4 comments:

  1. A beautiful concluding argument.

    I hope you can overcome your annoyance of Lyric Opera. It is, for some of us, a needed bulwark against the Lallapalosaing of musical culture.

    Tom

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  2. Not sure pity is much of an upside. What are those who are treating the patients in ICU's feeling? Some may be feeling pity, few feeling scorn. Fortunately almost all feel a sense of duty.
    As a retired health care worker we treated many who had very poor eating habits and no exercise routine. We maintained our professional demeanor but afterward would ask ourselves, what were these people expecting?
    They were living in denial, just as those who choose to extend the pandemic are.

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  3. Sorry, but I'm nowhere near as charitable and as forgiving. I'm pissed. My tolerance for these clowns is long gone. No sympathy for these ignorant, selfish, stupid anti-vaxxers and maskholes. None. Only symapthy I have for them is the sympathy in my dictionary, between shit and syphilis (an old snark, and not mine).

    Nope. No scorn. No pity. I simply hate them. Pure, unadulterated, and probably unhealthy hatred for them. For what they've done to our culture, our country, and our society. Ruined them, all of them, for keeps.

    We will never be the same again. We would have had this pandemic in our rear-view mirror now, if it weren't for these self-centered, thoughtless, inconsiderate glassbowls. Oh, and did I mention that I really, really hate them?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I get the impression you really hate them. In a sense there is pity insofar as they are sheep, following the far right leaders who downplay the effectiveness of the vaccine.
      Ironically, most of those leaders have been vaccinated.

      Delete

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