“Gloom, despair, and agony on me,
Deep dark depression, excessive misery….”
Those were the opening lines to a song based skit from the country music and comedy show “Hee Haw” back in the 1970s. Somehow the words and tune have remained stuck in my mind all these years.
Those lines sum up my feelings regarding COVID-19 masks, distancing, and lockdowns. But only recently have I realized there may be a silver lining contained in such feelings.
For over a year now, I’ve felt gloom and despair going to my local grocery store. Some readers may find it strange, but I enjoyed grocery shopping before the pandemic. I live alone, and shopping meant seeing other people. I liked wandering the store’s aisles, nodding hello to other shoppers, crossing items off my list, and looking here and there for bargains.
Then came the masks, social-distancing signs, and floor markers, the “Great Toilet Paper Shortage,” and ravaged or half-emptied shelves, and my enjoyment went down the tubes. Ever since, when I put a mask on upon entering the store, a black cloud of unhappiness envelops me.
The library where I used to read and write brings the same reaction. After months of curbside service only, the library finally opened its doors to the public, but masks were required. I wear glasses and so I couldn’t see the print through the fog. Returned books were placed under a five-day quarantine, and the tables and chairs in the vestibule that I so enjoyed were removed. At least the library still lets patrons sit down. When I recently visited Asheville, North Carolina, the libraries there had removed all tables and chairs except for those at the computer workstations.
I was overjoyed when customers were finally allowed into the seating area of the coffee shop, but to this day customers must still pull up their masks on entering, and the baristas sanitize the tables between customers.
When I look at these measures, some of them now seem crazy, such as the mad rush for toilet paper last spring, or the library “quarantining” books, a process now reduced to three days. When it comes to masks, I can’t help wondering why I still see people wearing them while driving alone in cars, or why young people in their mid-20s or younger walk around downtown Front Royal in masks in 50-degree temperatures and a 10-mile an hour wind. Why at the coffee shop must we wear masks when ordering, but we can then sit at a table only 15 feet away and talk, type, or read for two hours without a face covering?
In essence, the last year of pandemic has taken its toll on me, and even now whenever I put on a mask, read the social distancing signs in these establishments, or listen to reminders on the radio to be safe, I become depressed or angry.
