OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS

Behind the Mask

You can never really tell what will become the next cultural phenomenon. Sometimes a little thing that no one gave much thought to will just sneak up, and before you realize what has happened, it has become a big deal. A few examples are hula hoops, fins on the back of sedans, and Pop Tarts. I never really liked hula hoops, probably because I couldn’t hula properly, and Pop Tarts have always sort of tasted like strawberry cardboard to me. Fins, on the other hand, were way awesome, and provided that at least one automaker survives the Trump Fiasco, I hope to see them back some day.

Here in these waning days of the Great American Experiment, the wearing of masks has emerged as the latest in a long line of defining actions that divide us into two groups: us and them. I am going to take a few moments to discuss the history of mask-wearing in this country, and then to speculate about who wears what and why they do. I must warn you ahead of time that this is what they call a hot-button issue, although why that is the case is well and truly beyond me, so if you are the excitable type, please just skip this. You will be happier, I will be happier, and Mandy will be happier. Keeping her happy is my main goal in life.

For most of my life, the wearing of masks was not the divisive issue it is today. The exception to this general rule pertains to members of the Ku Klux Klan, about which we will talk presently. Kids wore them at Halloween because it was fun to go out and be rewarded with candy while pretending to be someone else, and even though I was a poor kid and never got to have that Green Lantern mask that I desperately wanted, I still did pretty well as a ghost, which was what I had to be year after year, because we already had a sheet with holes in it, and who needed a damn Green Lantern mask anyway? Sorry. It still hurts. 

Surgeons and nurses have always worn masks in operating rooms, and still do, because it was and is good medical practice to not breathe germs into open incisions, thus running the risk of killing those they would save. This practice began many centuries ago when medical professionals, and I use this term very loosely, began wearing masks that looked like bird heads with very long beaks, which they would don before bleeding their patients. Why these early masks were shaped like bird heads rather than, oh, say, badger heads is a mystery, but there you go. Bleeding, by the way, was the standard treatment for everything from the Black Plague to a hangnail, and the wearing of the bird masks was for the protection of the bleed-er rather than the bleed-ee, because they tended to be hunted down by the relatives of their late patients.

Members of the Ku Klux Klan wore masks because they were terrorists and cowards. They wore these because they knew in their heart of hearts that what they were up to was shameful and wrong, and they wanted to hide their identities. These mask-wearers were invariably people of low intellect and lower morality. Thankfully, you don’t see many of them around anymore. All of the old ones finally kicked the bucket and can now be found burning crosses in Hell, and the new generation of Klansmen is much smaller, no doubt due to the fact that no woman in her right mind would give any to the old generation. But when I was a youngster in north Alabama, it was still pretty common to encounter signs of their presence. I actually knew two Klansmen, and all I have to say about either is that they would have been a good place to start a decent human being.

Ninjas wore masks, although I am not really sure why they did so. I know this because I raised two boys, and we watched a lot of ninja movies back in the day. Invariably, they wore masks, which were always black. For those of you who don’t know, a ninja was sort of an Oriental assassin/warrior/superhero. They tended to strike at night, and even though they usually had perfectly good swords in scabbards on their backs, they preferred to battle their opponents hand to hand while making noises such as “whaaah” and “hi-yah.” 

Bank robbers wore masks so they could not be easily identified as they went about their illegal endeavors. This was very intuitive on their part, but whenever I talk about bank robbers, which is not as often as you might think, I am reminded of an actual bank robber from Atlanta I read about. He, too, wore a mask. Unfortunately, he was on his lunch break from Aamco Transmission, just down the street, and he was also wearing his work shirt. That shirt had Aamco stitched over one pocket and EARL stitched over the other. The robber got away with over $10,000, but he was a free, rich man for less than an hour. He was captured when the police walked into the transmission shop and asked for Earl.

Other mask-wearers included cowboys, who wore them both to keep dust out of their noses out on the lonesome trail and also because it looked pretty cool, superheroes, who always wanted to hide their identities although we all knew just who they were, and of course, people with respiratory issues, who wore masks because they were very invested in breathing. And sometimes, people wear masks in the bedroom. Yes, that is a euphemism. Mandy runs a family magazine, after all, and there is no need to expound further on such as that.

With the exception of the Klan, none of the above mask-wearing was very controversial, and for the most part it occurred without much thought or comment. Then, as you will remember, an actual global pandemic occurred. No, really. As a result, mask-wearing graduated from being your business to being everyone’s business. This moment in time was, I believe, when mask-wearing moved from the realm of personal choice into the murky area of political statement. The reason it did so was in most part due to the actions of our President at that time. You no doubt recall that it was his position that Covid was not really such a big problem, although a million dead Americans might have disagreed if not for the fact that they were dead, and he maintained this posture right up until the moment he caught the virus, at which time Air Force Two landed on the White House lawn and whisked him away to Walter Reed, where he received the best medical care our country had to offer, and he survived. If you are going to ignore reality, it is important to have a strong backup plan.

Anyway, at this point the entire country was divided into two groups. The first group was comprised of people who made the decision to follow prudent medical advice and wear a mask. I was one of these, and for the record, I neither caught Covid nor died, so for me at least, mask-wearing was a successful strategy. Yes, it was uncomfortable, and a lot of trouble on top of that, but I always imagined that dying alone in an isolation unit would be more uncomfortable, so I acted like a responsible adult and did what was necessary for my own health and for yours. The other group was peopled with those who, for whatever reason, took mask-wearing personally and would not do it. Somehow during all of this, mask-wearing became equated with liberal wokeness, and refusal to wear one became associated with conservative patriotism. Yes, that is really crazy. It made about as much sense as attributing the same points of view to the wearing or not of seat belts, but there it is.

Now that we are between pandemics—you can bet there will be another—the turmoil over the wearing of masks has settled some, with one important exception. This has to do with the federal agency known as ICE. Its agents have taken to wearing masks in the field as they abduct men, women, and children with the intention of deporting them, most often without the Constitutional requirement of due process. As of today, 57,000 human beings are being held in ICE facilities. 70% of these people have committed no crime at all. Whenever I see pictures of these ICE officers dressed up like soldiers and wearing those masks, I speculate as to why. Are they, like the kids at Halloween, dressing up to pretend they are superheroes? Or maybe they are having ninja fantasies. Perhaps, like Klansmen or bank robbers, they wish to remain anonymous. 

Or perhaps they just don’t want their mamas to know what they are doing.