No Other Way To Be, In This Place So Hostile To Humans
Yesterday at work, and not for the first time, I had put on my mask and was reminded of that scene in The Graduate when Benjamin’s father insists that he try out the diving suit, a two hundred dollar birthday present, in the pool. There were guests there for the celebration of the boy’s turning twenty one and he had zero interest in performing like a trained seal for them. His dad prevailed, however, and into the water he went.
I finally remembered to look it up on YouTube. The moment when the camera shows what Benjamin is looking at through the oval of his mask and how all he can hear is the hiss of the oxygen is what I sometimes feel wearing a face covering.
Clearly, it’s not the same experience, but the fact that the scene comes to mind at all tells me something is on my mind.
I can’t use masks with ear loops because I don’t have enough real estate behind my ears to accommodate them along with glasses and hearing aids. I can do it briefly, but it all just hurts after a while. Like millions of people, my glasses start to fog up immediately and I’m in search of that correct coefficient between mask, nose and lenses. Once I get it right, I want to leave it alone.
Then, of course, there’s the increased difficulty hearing, since I can’t read lips any more, which, though I’m not deaf, I had come to rely on more than I realized. More often than not, I need to ask customers or fellow team members to repeat what they just said, while I bend over, lean in a little, and turn my better ear toward them.
It all adds up to awkward and unfamiliar, like when Benjamin Braddock walks toward the pool with his gear, including the fins. I am definitely not used to it.
I forget protocol, too, from time to time.
There was a female customer at the store by the peanut butter to whom I got a little too close for comfort while I was working, apparently. She recoiled and acted like I was a leper, asking me to move away, even though everyone has masks. It stung a little bit, but I also thought good for her. She’s well within her rights to protect herself.
I do sometimes wonder how we’re going to keep this up. I recently heard that we’re looking at mask-wearing and distancing until 2022, whether we get a vaccine or reach herd immunity.
As happens so often, my time mountaineering and dealing with high-altitude issues helps me. It was easy to feel the inconvenience of all the time-consuming details. Everything seemed to take forever, setting up camp, striking camp, long daily slogs.
I wrote, after stopping for the night once —
“Here it is actually crevasse-free and less claustrophobic as we can walk around untethered (unroped, that is, to a fellow climber).
Being on the rope behind slower climbers, stopping and starting, takes a lot of the romance out of climbing. It fell on me to help cook supper and I lost patience with one of the stoves which was hard to pressurize.”
I lose patience like that now, at times. I want to throw stuff.
I continued, “My brothers on the rope were there helping me stay safe, helping me eat, laugh and get my thoughts off the tedium. There was no other way to be in this place so hostile to humans.”
Sound familiar?
Whether dark, menacing crevasses or microscopic viruses, together is the way through.