I’ve been working on this social distancing thing, and I think I have it down pat. With my razzle-dazzle hearing aids, I can mostly hear what people are saying from six feet away and if I get stuck, I usually attempt lip-reading, which I am not particularly good at, especially if the speaker is wearing a mask! My friend and I decided we had hunkered down long enough and thought we would toddle (old people term for sprinting without falling down) to the local watering hole for a glass of wine. How lovely to be in the company of others, even if we didn’t know them, we decided. When we arrived, we found a few others—ten to be exact—who were also testing their social distancing skills. They were ALL on their phones, which I guess is their way to social distance since they weren’t wearing masks. We were the only masked persons in a restaurant, but that’s another blog subject.
The restaurant had positioned its tables nicely and wearing masks we felt safe from the evil Mr. Corona, but one never knows, that bugger can creep up you. And, at my age, I have no interest in meeting that fellow.
My friend and I sat sipping our wine, hoping not to drool red merlot onto our white masks. It was tricky and I struggled to get into the rhythm of masking and unmasking, sipping and not sipping. Mask on. Pick up glass. Mask off. Sip wine. Put mask on. Set glass down. Repeat until glass is empty and second glass arrives. Just to practice, you understand. I fell into the rhythm nicely, like a scholar who had mastered Mr. Miyagi’s Wax On, Wax Off routine. But as I began my second glass, the mask flipped off my ear, knocking my hearing aid to the floor. The errant mask flung itself at my still full wine glass, half in and half out. What is the socially acceptable thing to do? Put it back on? Suck the wine off the mask? Throw it away?
I retrieved my hearing aid, thanking my lucky stars that it didn’t land in the merlot, and started laughing. This is getting serious because now Mr. Corona has begun interfering with my wine drinking and that’s not acceptable. But then I remembered, this is 2020 and anything can happen.
