Gary is doing some magical thinking. He’s collecting face masks as amulets to protect him from the virus. The more face masks he has, the safer we are, though we can only wear one at a time, generally (see below for the exception).
I tried to make a face mask, but as we know the spirits of evil murdered my sewing machine after one seam.
Gary’s much happier stimulating the economy, so here is his face mask collection.
Our first masks were N-95s, because of course Gary did the research.
This mask caused friction in our marriage. Right after it came, doctors began begging for N-95s, and he wouldn’t make the sacrifice.
Turns out the N95 was a construction grade one, not a medical grade one, so he turned on it and picked up two KN95s.
I was quite happy with mine. It’s washable and it covers my wattle. I may permanently integrate it in my wardrobe for that reason. When I’m in my sunglasses and this wattle-cupping mask I look only forty-five years old.
Gary decided this mask by itself was insufficient and needed to be topped by another layer of mask, the sporty, fashionable overmask.
I might have gone with the layered look, but more masks arrived before I had a chance to leave the house: a very snug canvas Chinese mask that Gary couldn’t even fit over his German nose, and a cute one with clouds.
I liked the cloud mask so much so that I believe I said, “Please stop buying masks,” but it was another mask too snug for Gary, so he bought two types of mask extenders.
Mind you, Gary hasn’t left the house for weeks at this point. Then a box of 50 paper masks arrived that he bought a month before.
He started wearing those disposable masks whenever he passed me in the hall or heard my voice. When he left the house for his nose test, he wore the white mask (without the coordinating black overmask, mind you.)
I don’t know when he ordered the next mask that arrived, but this was the ideal, the ultimate, the one mask to rule them all: the blue Take Care mask. I liked this one so much I said, “Cut it out with the fucking masks, already.”
Gary said, “I will. This is the best mask. It has a pocket for a filter and it fits so I won’t have to use those extenders I bought for the cloud mask.”
“So no more masks, right?”
“Well, I won’t buy any more.” He paused. “There might be some still in the pipeline.”
There were: these individually-wrapped wrapped K-95s:
“But look,” he said when I complained. “These are individually wrapped. And they’re from China,” because I guess he wants a mask from every continent for his international mask collection.
When he went out to get his blood draw last week, he came in and gushed, “I found a mask in the car! They had it for me when I got the nose test, but I already had a mask o
n, so I stowed it in the glove compartment. It’s the best mask! It’s disposable, and it’s yellow.” Face it, from a practical point of view all these masks have been disposable.
Since then no new masks have arrived, but that’s not to say he’s stopped buying them. I wonder how long Gary will keep trying to keep us healthy by laying money on the mask altar.
14 responses to “Gary and Masks”
I do understand people wanting to find A Comfortable Mask or A Mask Which Does Not Make Their Glasses Fog Up. I also understand buying new masks when you hear more about medical recommendations and realize that your current masks are not ideal. Or if you go out a lot, making sure you have enough masks so that you can rotate them for decontamination. But… yeah.
Maybe you can pretend that they’re Retirement Collectibles? and be grateful that your house is not overrun with, say, neon beer signs or antique taxidermy, but instead that Gary’s Obnoxious Collection can probably even fit in a regular shoebox?
(also: donate the ones that don’t fit! please donate the ones that don’t work for you!)(and I’m with you on the N95s, although now that supply is *maybe* okay for now, it is, I think, totally fine to have them? … but be prepared to turn them in if medical staff *start having to re-wear their N95s again*!)
KC – I will relay these recommendations to Gary, but as I say, the magic doesn’t work if you don’t have the quantity of masks. And they have to be in a special mask bag, which I discovered today when two more masks arrived.
Ah. Magical quantities. I admit I get somewhat grabby about things-that-break or things-that-get-used-up (there must always be enough toilet paper to last through a GI bug. Always.), but even then, my maximum is usually “enough subs so that if our current thing runs out/breaks, we have something to use in that [extremely necessary function] until it can be replaced” – which is usually a maximum of a week or so.
That said, I also understand how the “until it can be replaced” part has shifted and gotten less obvious with supplies of things being uncertain, etc. (the Great Toilet Paper Vanishing) – which, on a larger scale, is probaby how Great Depression survivors ended up wanting to keep ALL their twist-ties because they had experienced 1. reliable sources of everyday items drying up abruptly and traumatically, and 2. using just about everything for purposes it was not intended, if they had it and didn’t have the normal thing. So if that happened again, they’d be prepared, or at least wouldn’t be kicking themselves for throwing out that twist-tie in 1990. But large-scale supply disruption and large-scale economic disruption didn’t happen for most of the period they were saving their twist-ties. (fortunately?)
But masks that don’t work for you: find a new home for them. They’re not very useful for purposes other than being masks.
I do believe in people who are out and about, especially for long hours in the sun, having multiple masks so they can sub them out 1. when they get damp from sweat, 2. when someone has sneezed/coughed semi-near them recently [I mean, leave the area *then* sub the mask], and so they can use a different set of masks each day and not have to do a load of Mask Laundry every night, but… this does not seem to be Gary’s use case, here. You guys basically need one or two masks each, maximum, if you’re only briefly going out for things?
(we have three total for the two of us; we go out rarely enough that we just use the “leave it dry for 72 hours” method of decontamination at this time. When it starts looking like we’ll have to leave our bubble more, if that happens before a vaccine or something, then I will make more masks, though.)
KC – interesting theory about the depression era survivors. All your points are very sensible and rational. Gary is not sensible and rational.
Yeah, I had relatives whose Great Depression-Fueled Hoarder House was seriously legendary; the family cleaned it out, and in the attic, there was a bale of overalls that had been patched so many times they actually couldn’t be patched anymore, and were thus discarded by the wearer (but not thrown out) and also a keg of bent nails (presumably because as long as you have enough money and a supply of not-bent nails, it’s not worth straightening them out – but at many points in history, it has in fact been worth a man’s work day to straighten out bent nails, so…). I can’t claim any evidence other than peoples’ reiteration “but I might need it!” in combination the stories of what they *did* use for what. (which are fascinating and also slightly terrifying)
Obviously, not everyone took it in the keep-all-the-things direction (and even out of those who took it in that direction, very few took it *that* far for that long!), but I can really see the appeal for those who got hit with serious trauma then, of somehow trying to make sure you have enough. (which is also worrying, since I definitely have The Hoarding Gene, if there is a Hoarding Gene.)
I do sort of wonder what percentage of Americans will now keep at least X quantity of toilet paper on hand for: a month [or those who have stopped bothering now that it’s easily available in stores again]? six months? a year? five years? a decade? a lifetime? I have a friend who used to usually go to the store when they were on their literal last-roll-in-the-house – Marie Kondo plus urban living – and they had trouble with that in March, but I don’t know whether they’ve swapped back now or whether they’ll be slightly more conservative with toilet paper stocking for a while. (I do not care about people keeping more-than-the-last-roll of toilet paper around – but I’d be pleased, actually, if people would start keeping at least the recommended emergency three days’ worth of food and water in stock in their homes, because in a pinch, you can do without TP, but water… not so much!) (which reminds me that actually, I think we only have one and a half days’ worth of water in ye olde tornado shelter. Hm. Oops.)
(fundamentally, I am not really sensible and rational either, and it is also very hard to be sensible and rational when the facts upon which you base your decisions *change* – we live five minutes from a grocery store, and thus our pantry for the last few years has been largely based on the “would we rather have it literally here, or is it okay to have it 15 minutes or so from when we want it?” algorithm. Now we are in a quarantine bubble and not only are we therefore not 15 minutes from having something in hand, there have also been random weird shortages such that one can’t assume that the grocery store will of course have [thing] at the specific time our grocery delivery order gets collected at the shelves, so… what *is* rational stocking-up behavior when things keep changing? I’ve gone for “one grocery delivery interval’s worth of most things, one and a half to two grocery delivery intervals’ worth of No Really This Thing No Substitutes things” [so that if they’re out of stock, we can potentially place another order sooner than we would have normally, but long enough apart that they have decent odds of having it back in stock?] but is that rational? Especially when you don’t know whether things will get more stable or less stable? No clue!)
Wow- I did not even know they made thst many different kinds of masks. I made a bunch of masks and donated most but kept enough for us so that when the kids lose one I will have backup. I do NOT want to have to haul my machine out again. I hope we can be done with mask wearing sooner than later.
KC – I would hoard, but I look at things and weigh them against real estate. I know people who have moved to larger homes so they can have a bigger basement for storage. I mean. Clean out your basement. Ernie – your lips to Dr. Fauci’s ear. I don’t think I can get on a plane or go in a crowd until there’s a vaccine, mask or not.
I think there’s a difference between:
A: storage you *use* where:
1. you know what is there and
2. can access things as you need/want them (easily enough that you do that instead of buying another even though you know you have one “somewhere”) and
3. within a reasonable period of time will use at least most of it [reasonable period of time depending on the cost/size/disposability of items; I think it’s fine to go skiing one every decade for a reunion and own skis, but storing newspaper in case you ever get back to papier-mache when you haven’t done it for years… eh.)
and
B: storage that is mostly just where stuff goes to die/be forgotten about (as per some people I am related to who, upon cleaning out a portion of their garage, found that they already owned three hummingbird feeders in addition to the one that they’d recently bought, which they *had* bought while being pretty sure they had one “somewhere” but not enough of an idea where as to be able to dig it out). In this case, people get more storage specifically to avoid having to deal with the stored things, and that is… generally not a good outcome for them or their heirs.
I guess: some people use entire double-wise garage-worths of Christmas storage, and use it all every year (or on a rotation – this set of things this year, the other set next year); that is very much not me, but for them, having a ton of storage space makes sense. The Bad Part is mostly when people either 1. can’t find stuff and thus just re-buy or 2. don’t know what’s in there and thus re-buy or 3. have things they’re never actually going to use or look at again stacked and stacked and stacked. (okay, the worst is probably when people store stuff that will die before they unpack it; food that will expire, elastic that will kick the bucket, batteries that will die and gloop all over things; and store it all mixed up with things that *are* of actual value, as per the Hoarding House where everything had to be gone through carefully since the important family heirlooms and also random wads of cash [there were dozens of cash caches over the house] were all mixed up with the no-really-this-is-trash stuff.)
Well, and then there are Multiple Craft People like me, who have assorted hobbies which each have their own sets of tools and consumables, and each is rotated through periodically and… yeah. Storage is individual. and non-functional storage needs to be fixed or eliminated.
I did see a suggestion years ago to use thrift stores conceptually as storage lockers instead of renting a storage locker for things you only occasionally use but that are regularly in thrift stores; you can pretty much always find a crock-pot, so if you only go on a crock-pot kick once every four years, then give away your crock pot and buy a new one next crock-pot kick. 🙂 I thought that was pretty brilliant, especially for people with limited storage, but also pretty limited, because if you have, say, a pair of ice skates that *actually fit you* but do not ice skate regularly – then that is not something you will find at any thrift store you go to.
(Personally, I’m really hoping people keep wearing masks until we get a vaccine or otherwise solve this, since everyone-wearing-masks is looking like one of the best ways of keeping community transmission at least *partly* in check [I mean, there are government actions which could have been better, and if we were in a place to do contact tracing, then that would be better, but that is not where we are…] which is useful both for the immunocompromised who will be less likely to get sick if there are fewer people sick in their community at any given time, and also useful for keeping fatality rates down by not swamping hospitals (and by not introducing the virus to the sheltering-but-not-perfect-bubble-ing elderly/immunocompromised). But I also understand people wanting us to be at that point where we really don’t need to wear masks any more! and can hug people!)
KC – yes, the B storage people are dogs in the manger. My mom would say they were keeping those hummingbird feeders out of the hands of those who would use them.
Well, usually there are vague intentions, so at least not *deliberate* dogs in the manger.
But yes, your mother’s viewpoint is what I remind myself of when I send craft supplies that are 1. replaceable and 2. that I have no plans for, to the thrift store. Someone else can use it! Which is better than it sitting unused in a box for a decade!
(Granted, this attitude towards craft discards is only since I’ve had stable finances which have “discretionary spending” in them, because before that time there was the Box Of Free/Cheap Craft Materials out of which all cards and many gifts were fashioned, and the point was not “being able to do something hand-made!” but “being able to not spend money because we do not have money, but being still able to give a card or something” and thus the idea that if I want something, I can just buy it at the craft store was not in action. But once there was adequate income to cover expenses by more than a centimeter or so, those boxes (and also the “we were given this but don’t want it” potential-gifts-for-others box) got culled, albeit not without a sense of nostalgia for flipping through dozens of out-of-date calendars I’d been given to try to find some section of a picture that I could make a joke or something plausibly card-y out of and snip out and glue on the front of one of the [free discard from a church office – plain cards on inside and back, embossed stylized praying hands on the front; but they came with envelopes and glue works…]. Also, a lot of that “craft” box got culled into the recycling bin rather than the box-to-thrift-store; I do not expect the thrift store to want partly-cut-into long-expired calendars. But yes. If you’re not using something, and not going to use it, and not deeply enjoying your possession of it, send it on. If you don’t know where any of your stuff is and therefore *can’t use it* – a la hummingbird feeders – then maybe start working through it and sending it on as well…)
KC. – Gary and I had many spirited debates about having a regifting box. I was for it. He won’t even return pants that don’t fit people have given him.
Yeah. It took me a bit to be okay with Getting Rid Of Gifts. (although I have always been conceptually okay with swapping sizes at the store, I think.) But when I realized that most gifts are not “here is the *EXACT THING* that I wanted to give you!” but are more “I am attempting to express an emotion with a physical object and the goal is for you to end up with something you enjoy and also know my affection” (or, at minimum, “this is a Gift Holiday and therefore here is a Gift because Social Obligation or Habit.”), then I was happier with saying “okay, the intent was for us to enjoy this, we’re not enjoying it, therefore let’s send it somewhere where it can be enjoyed.”
And we use the gift box mostly for those “we have no idea what to get for this person anyway” situations, where honestly, a candle from someone who really knows and loves candles will *probably be a better candle* than the one I would pick out at a store online for a candle-loving person. So! It is basically a tiny gift shop. (but: always put post-it notes on items so that you know where they came from so that they can go somewhere different.)
But also, there are people who are totally offended by the concept, so eh. Gary’s response (I mean: sub the pants, but otherwise) may be reasonable, depending on your social context.
(also: generally: it is better and safer to not re-gift hand-made items [other than very-generic but technically-homemade lotions, candles, soaps, or baked goods.][but if someone gives you a hand-made stripey llama candle, probably do not regift.])
KC – I kept a cache of gifts for hostess gifts in my box (usually I plan for gifts, but for some reason I always forget hostess gifts). Candles, jars of fancy spices.
Hostess gift cache is very smart!