Masking...

 

 

 This might be my tired face. It might also be my smiling face, or my grimacing face, or my laughing face. Masks, you know, mask. Like text on a screen, it is hard to emote with half your face covered. 

Actually, I took this last year as the TEMS folk loaded Better Half into their ambulance. Chest pain and a stent. The mask hid my fear from public eye.

Perhaps mask mandates are doing us a favor by allowing us the ability to express only with our eyes and gesture? Nobody has a clue about what is on our minds unless we open our mouths or use some body language.

However, insecure or bashful people like myself feel protected by a shell that obscures just enough of our face that we feel a sense of liberation. We do not have to mumble. We can enunciate. I can take a picture of myself and publish it online without regret or fear.

But it also means people can't fully convey our sympathy or joy to strangers. Our lips can not be read by the hearing-impaired.

There are more downsides, of course.

For example, from what I have heard from my online Aspy friends, mask mandates are a curse. Other people wearing a mask makes it difficult for some people with ASD to "read" people. Not to mention that wearing an actual mask is also hellish for those ASD patients that are highly sensitive to touch.

And we have the idiots that think masks are a political statement.  

Going back to that picture at the top:

I remember a stranger lifting my spirits in Kroger. He was an employee. The day was a nightmare due to the whole ambulance-chest pain thing. I had stopped to pick up dinner.

"You have a beautiful smile," he winked.

Of course, he could not see my expression. But at that moment - when I most needed to hear something positive - his clever quip truly made my day brighter.

 

 

As always, WEAR YOUR DAMN MASKS, PEOPLE.