Masked, vaxxed and miffed

 

My mom, Greg and I were traveling in a little group and dealing with the inconvenience of Covid. We'd all been vaxxed, but were encountering conflicting rules and regulations regarding mask wearing in different public and semi-public locales. 

"But Mom," I said, "Why do we have to give a fuck about the people who refuse to get vaccinated?" 

I'd had enough of the musical mask peekaboo game. Simon says, "Put on your mask." "Mother, may I take off my mask?" So, arbitrary and inconsistent. I was just tired of it all.

"It's not as simple as all that," said my mom, who was not wearing her mask at the moment.

"Like right now. We're in and enclosed space, and you aren't wearing your mask," I noted. I wasn't wearing mine either. We were in a car.

"That's different, we're--," she began.

"In the same bubble," I interrupted. "I know, I know. But we could be infecting one another as asymptomatic carriers, and leaving a trail of virus on whatever surfaces we touch. Who's going to address all those surfaces? They can't disinfect the entire world. Look around. Surface, surface, surface. They're everywhere." I was just being bratty at this point.

My mom swerved off the road and into a freshly plowed field, making an unconventional right-hand U-turn. I gave her shit about her inconsistency at rule following:

"What was that?" I teased. "Trespassing and violation of the vehicle code, destruction of private property--and for what? So you could make a whimsical U-turn?" I was mostly still miffed about the masks.

"Perhaps I did it to show you what happens when people just do what they want, without consideration for rules, or for the people the rules protect," she said. Maybe I just thought she said it, but her erratic turn did illustrate a point of some kind or another, I just wasn't sure what.

We arrived a restaurant, and my mom wheeled me around in a wheelchair to the back entrance. We passed a pretty blonde employee who I recognized from the Pizza Roundup. She was bent over, sweeping some debris into a dustpan, and her normally skin tight jeans were sagged, rapper style, exposing some striped panties. My mom whirled me around in the wheelchair so that I missed most of the show.

"MO--OM!!" I whined, in a perfect Cartman pout. She'd done that intentionally, getting back at me for my U-turn comment, I just knew it.

Earlier on, I'd been lying on a beach. There were some kids playing in the sand close to the surf. They stopped to look at me, and, thinking I might be dead, started talking excitedly about what to do with my dead body.

"Look! He's not moving! The tide is going to get him!" They were thrilled about that, apparently.

I decided to let it play out and stayed put, even though the tide was indeed lapping at my feet. One or two more waves, and I'd be completely submerged, face down in the wet sand. A particularly large surge came up and soaked me thoroughly. I rose up, arms outstretched like mummy, to the children's squeals of delight.

Unmummy-like, I reached into my coat pocket and retrieved a waterproof cellphone. I began to dial it. It had a keypad that resembled a scientific calculator and a tiny display. It was, for the most part, a calculator, but it functioned as a phone as well. I managed to get the phone to ring some number, though I have no idea whose number it was. I just wanted to make sure it still worked after the soaking.

I staggered up the beach and back to the restaurant, where I was to meet my mom and Greg. They were engaged in a conversation about the whole subject of masks, vaxxing and the general state of all things Covid. Masks were being worn by some, though not with any rhyme or reason as to who, when or where. Some people were wearing them haphazardly around their necks, others not at all.

This is where I came in, dream sequence-wise. My dream recall is very disjointed these days, with things frequently ending where they began and all jumbled up in the middle, like some Tarantino short film, though less inspired.