I have had it.

I suppose there are about a million reasons for it, such as our general lack of trust and unerring suspicion of anyone who might know more than we do, but the net effect is simple.

If the Creator had made us with more than two feet we’d run out of bullets.

We all want business to reopen. We all know we need to be safe. We all know we need jobs and the economy to return, while there’s still time.

The single-most important thing any of us can do to make that happen is nothing more than an expression of our concern for neighbors, co-workers, customers, checkout clerks, front-line doctors and nurses, loved ones, friends and family: put on a mask.

It’s not about keeping YOU from getting sick. It’s about lowering the chances you might get someone else sick. What part of that is so difficult to understand? If you allegedly care about others to the extent that you restrain your dog from dumping in someone else’s yard, this should not exceed your grasp.

Of course plenty of people ignore the good sense of that one, too.

Personally, I think it comes from more than 50 years of cultural conditioning that says every last one of us in the center of the universe – and we deserve whatever we want. “I don’t have to wear a mask because of my rights.”

If we are who we say we are, shouldn’t that read “I have to wear a mask because I care about your rights, too”?

I mean, only if we really believe that part of the song that says it was grace that God shed on us. You know. Unmerited favor?

I’m not sure we can honestly sing those words again if we won’t put on a mask. Is it really about your rights, or just flexing some small illusion of control in world that feels like its in an uncontrolled spin?

I said weeks ago in many forums that if we failed to get it right the first time, the almost-inevitable second shutdown would be vastly more damaging than the first. That looming possibility seems ever more certain by the day, if…

we all don’t pitch in and do what we ought to do. A simple, selfless gesture that might actually slow this cursed virus down enough to catch up, but also to show other people that we do care – not just about ourselves. In hard times, anyone can do that. But to look out for each other? Isn’t that what we’ve always said we’re about?

I’ll say it again: our parents and grandparents were part of what we now call The Greatest Generation. This might just be our chance to rise to greatness.

No one is asking you to buy War Bonds, or collect scrap metal, or only get gas on “A” days, or deal with one fresh egg a week. We’re just saying think of your loved ones.

Wearing a mask isn’t weak.

Jody Dean

7.1.2020