An Open Letter to All My New Besties at the Local School Board Meeting
August 2021
Dear Neighbors:
I don’t much like debating. I like knowing, and being sure of what I know, and slumping comfortably into an armchair of peer-reviewed claims. I like sipping an expertly made old-fashioned—did I tell you how much I like experts?—while watching PBS News Hour. I like PBS News Hour. All that dullness. All that quiet faith in the right and true and boring thing to do. Like a snug seat belt. I like snug seat belts too.
But then I met you. Or you all—can I manage a ya’ll?—jammed into cafeteria benches. What should I call a gathering of angry, anti-mask neighbors? A vector? A woe? I’d thought, friends, that we’d rally around all that we agreed on: the regrettable hardness of our water and the depravity of our county rivals, the beauty of our gardens and the functioning lungs of our kids. Did our ball game bro hugs mean nothing to you? Our concert night nods?
Three hours, six Tums, and a heckle train later, I can now answer: apparently not.
Here’s the rub, though: you’re actually convincing me. Like my kid does, through pit bull tenacity and bendy straw sophistry. Through fire engine tantrums and DEFCON 1 threats. After tonight, I’m no longer convinced—just by looking beneath it—that there aren’t monsters under the bed. I want to hear first from other, less credible beds. I want reassurance that, just because this arm came back unmauled, my leg will too.
I’m thinking of you, mother of three in the Garfield t-shirt. I’m thinking of the tragedy—your words—of another few months of your kids cut off from their principal’s smile. I too am pro-smile. I too believe that a smile is worth, well, my child’s sense of taste and smell. A smile, I’ve learned, is the happiness you find right under your nose. I see yours now, so cozy with the microphone. I see flecks of spittle. No viral load there.
She was no less persuasive than you, novice evangelist, who boomed, arms raised, that “if God had meant for us to wear masks, we’d have been born with them!” This too I found moving, and—as I moved concentrically outward from this hard nugget of logic—I saw so much that I could now ignore: clothes, indoor plumbing, the essential oils you hawk around town. Did God really intend us to distill oil to its essence? That sounds vaguely Eastern, kind of unchristian. Let’s talk on Sunday. I’ll be dressed in my best fig leaf.
These arguments pale, though, to yours, Mr. Masculinist, who sees in masks a return to—may I quote you?—“living in fear.” That’s for the girly districts, the ex-urbs and the art schools, who ought to know, after their last ass-whomping in football, that we must suffer a few sniffles if we want to grow hair on our chests. That’s why our mascot is a Viking. Those guys invented berserking, drinking horns, Chris Hemsworth, and French braids.
Which brings me, not coincidentally, to you, libertarian with the Gadsden hat and Three-Percenter arm tats. I too am weary of the authoritarianism implicit in this pro-mask movement. Public health measure or jackbooted power grab? Safety for our kiddos or the black helicopters’ first salvo? Who’s to know, and with those steely eyes and grunted demands, who’s to care?
I heard someone say you put the “dumb” back in freedom. Nonsense. You put the Ayn Rand back in “I’m randy.” Can I touch your guns? No, I mean your arms. Wait, that’s no better. What I mean to say is you’re hotter. Than these snowflakes. Than these libtards. Your biceps persuaded me. I’ll trade in the bi-coastal if you’ll try the bi-curious.
But it was you, E.R. nurse, who finally convinced me. You boldly defied a profession’s best practices. You, with that rhetorical riff—a string of quasi-scientific what ifs—that loosened my grip on statistics. You forced me at last to ask, “what if this Delta variant isn’t really all that transmissible?” and “what if his numbers”—you level a finger at our County Health Board’s director—“are wrong?”
When you put it that way, and we consider space-time’s infinite futures, well, why should I give two shits about my actions? Each of your questions plunged me into a fresh rabbit hole of speculation. No wait, scratch that. Each felt like a fork in the road, and, with so many to consider, it’s better to just sit my ass down on the asphalt.
It’s pretty here, and you’ll join me—everyone here, yes, will join me?—and we’ll have a little chat and bring our kids, and they’ll bring their balls, and we’ll just play a while in this street. Besides, I doubt any trucks still use this road anyway.
Derek Mong