Covetiquette

Amid the many things I hate about this pandemic, here’s one I love: watching a delicate new etiquette emerge.

Here in western Massachusetts, we don’t just follow the CDC guidelines: we embrace them with a sense of humor and an air of courtesy. Sometimes we add a dash of panache.

As a bottom line, we are not jerks. We wear our masks without complaint if we’re indoors or less than six feet from a person outside our bubble. Mostly we even wear them as they are meant to be worn. At the grocery store, I do occasionally shudder to see a “Nose No No” (mouth masked but nose uncovered). At the post office a couple of weeks ago, the postal clerk pulled her mask down whenever she spoke to a customer. (We sighed with relief when we got called up by a different clerk.) And every once in a while, someone used to pass me too closely on the bike-trail without a mask. (I mostly stay off the bike trail now. As Yogi Berra said of the Hamptons, “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”)

Some of the masks are bringing a little art in our daily lives. A young woman at the fish counter, who sported a mask of pretty floral cotton, told me her aunt made it for her. A clerk serving us take-out muffins from the coffee shop said hers was a handmade gift from her mom. I have two nice ones sewn for me by friends. These sorts of masks are knitting – or *ahem* stitching – our families and communities together.

When we’re not wearing our masks, we’re carrying them. People do that in various ways, some of them amusing. You can stuff your mask in your pocket, of course, but pulling it out of the pocket gets irritating if you’re running in and out of various stores. (Touching it all the time isn’t great from the Covid-prevention perspective, either.) One of my friends has a pretty bandeau she can pull up from around her neck. Masks with ear-loops can be left dangling off one ear – workable, though ridiculous-looking. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s mostly men who do this. Luckily for me, the loops get all tangled with the earpieces of glasses, so I’m spared the sight of my husband wearing a wide earring made of folded paper. Masks that tie behind the head can be worn as a scarf – a fashion I expect to take off like a rocket once we move into the cooler weather of fall. Another fashionista move: I bought one of those “cooling gaiters” one sees advertised (it’s marginally effective); on sauna-like mornings, I wear it over my forehead hippie-girl fashion, as though I’m at Woodstock. (I never was)

For hikes in this heat, I mostly wear paper masks. When no one is around me on the trail, I employ two primary storage techniques. In the first, I keep the loops over my ears and tuck the mask under my chin. My husband and I call this the “chin sling.” (Actually, my husband calls it the “double-chin sling.”) More often, I wear the loops around my wrist. We call this “the Covid corsage.” Here’s a seemingly sensible technique to avoid: holding one loop in one’s hand and letting the mask dangle. If there is a puppy nearby, you risk having the hanging loop snatched by little teeth and watching your mask disappear into the distance, to be buried or abandoned once the puppy tires of his new toy.

But masks aren’t the whole of the new Covetiquette.

We thank essential workers when we encounter them. (That includes retail clerks.)

We dance quickly and politely around other people in the grocery stores, even with our masks on. Groups at parks and beaches give each other wide berths. On trails, we step aside to let faster groups through (and pull our masks up as they go by); on sidewalks, we move onto the street to give another person room.

We cough into our elbows—even if we’re masked! Even if we know it’s allergies!  

We hug our children only when we can’t bear not to. We don’t hug our friends at all. Depending on our personalities, we bump elbows or bow or wave energetically.

It’s civilized, and it’s working. Here in Massachusetts, the numbers of new cases has dropped steadily. My friends and I have recently enjoyed a few lunches, small dinner parties, and book-group discussions that were outdoors, socially distanced, and in person. It felt safe. It felt fabulous.

Soon Massachusetts will experience the annual migration of college students, with their imperfectly developed capacities for good judgment and responsible behavior. Things may change when they arrive. But meanwhile, we’re behaving responsibly, as if we’re a community saving ourselves and each other.

Because that’s what we are, and that’s what we’re doing.