Where Were They?

 They are currently holding the Winter Olympics. In (checks notes) China. This is coincidental to the airing of the American Football World Championship which was won by (checks notes again) a Doctor Dre. All of this spectacle took place on our televisions over the past weekend, and many of us sat starstruck on our couches while a parade of celebrity passed through our living rooms. What we didn't see was a lot of masks. 

Not the theatrical kind. Not the bank-robbing kind, that might have been appropriate on a ski slope near Beijing, but since we live in a world that trades heavily on the visages of those with higher Q ratings than our own, we are left to gaze longingly on those chins and lips that are exceptions to the rule. The mask mandates, that for convenience sake really ought to be called "maskdates." 

This is not a diatribe about these orders from on high. I have no real issue with the powers that be suggesting ways that I might stay safe and avoid contracting a potentially deadly disease. I am down with that. What puzzles me is how very little of what I saw this past weekend applied to my daily life. Those multimillion dollar commercials that played out during the Super Bowl, the ones that tend to be seen just once in all their glory, featured the countenances of famous or soon-to-be famous humans going about their business: driving electric trucks, driving electric cars, driving electric vehicles to purchase Doritos. Without masks. Which did not have the net effect of making me more likely to purchase an electric Dorito, but rather it made me nervous. Nervous in the same way I tend to get these days anytime I watch a TV show or movie with crowds of people. Why aren't they maintaining some sort of safe distance? Nobody has a mask on? Unsettling is perhaps an understatement. It certainly rocks something to my core. 

When they made the presentation of the Lombardi Trophy on that cramped little podium they rolled out on the field, I looked for a mask among the great big men embracing and celebrating. Who cares? We're all going to Disneyland!

I'm not. I am sitting in my home, waiting for the scientists to free me from this sentence that has dragged on for nearly two years. What approximates "normal life" continues to play out in front of me while I continue to amend my social calendar and make sure I have extra K95s in a basket by the door. I get tested twice a week, to make sure I haven't picked anything up through the double layer of protection over my sweaty mouth and chin. 

And I wait anxiously for the weekly drama on NBC that features an everyday family struggling to play by the rules. The rules we need to keep following. Even during the commercials.