Hey, June! What's the Tune? (2019's Misery, But This Time With Masks!)

Brighter days are ahead, I hope!

Well.  Today is the first day of the last month of the first half of 2020.  If that sounds confusing, then it's right on-brand for 2020 So Far, isn't it? 

Here we are, starting June out, anyway.  It's officially summer vacation.  It doesn't feel like summer vacation, because it's felt like we've been in the limbo-version of summer vacation since March 16.  

Every day, another Event turns up cancelled until next year.  It's sobering and sad, but at least we have Next Year to hold onto.  At this point, I'll grasp at anything, you know?  And I understand these events are dropping like flies in a cloud of raid for this year because we've reached the point where reservations have to be made, money needs to change hands, and plans need to start forming up in concrete.  And things are too uncertain right now to let the concrete plans set.  Everybody's playing it safe, and with that, I agree.

And we're all wearing around these damn masks amid conflicting data on just how effective they really are in protecting ourselves and others against The Virus.  I'm not here to get into a big thing about Mask vs. No Mask.  But I do have a bit of a hissy fit to throw.  This blog is my party, and I'll throw a piss-fit if I want to.  Please bear with me.

It's plenty miserable to wear a mask all day in the dentist's office, which is air-conditioned.  So it's going to be super-fun to be wearing masks into and out of buildings and amongst people, come July.  Remember how freakin' hot it got in July 2019?  There was a massive heat-dome that settled in over the entire northern hemisphere.  I remember how it would take me exactly six and a half seconds to be soaked through my clothes, just walking outside.  That was just pure misery.  

2020's motto seems to be "2020: 2019's Misery, But This Time With Masks!"

And I've got to say, we all look stupid AF in those masks. At least we all look stupid together.  The bandana people look kind of cool.  The people who wear those neck gaiters like bikers wear- they look all right. 

It is really weird to have half a face covered up in public, though.  It's like a handicap.  I smooth over a lot of tense situations with a smile.  Smiling when out and about is kind of my jam.  'Cause it's worth it.  So to compensate for the smiley-half of my face being covered up (because no way in hell will I wear a goofy-smiley-face mask), I've been really trying to do like Tyra Banks says and eye-le- smile with my eyes.  I'm not sure how well this is going, if I'm pulling it off, or if I just look like Crazy Eyes from Orange Is The New Black.  (But with a mask on!)

Then there's the issue of how most people mumble.  I have quite good hearing.  My Airmen Medical Examiner said I have "Excellent Hearing" at my last flight physical, and he didn't even add "For a broad your age" to that assessment.  But apparently I rely more than I knew on lip-reading.  And most of the people I come into contact with are Mumblers. The masks exacerbate this problem and also erase the ability to use lip-reading as back-up to hearing.  I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to shout "Mumbler!" at a Mumbler, like Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka shouted at Mike TeeVee.  People mumble in their masks.  

In my time working at my husband's dental office, behind a mask, I learned to speak in what I call an "enhanced indoor voice" when I'm wearing a mask.  It involves speaking from the diaphragm, with lots of good, resonate breath support, and also sort of over-enunciating, so the words come out very clearly.  And because you're behind the mask, nobody can see you over-enunciating.  You don't want to over-enunciate to the point where you're coming off like a condescending asshole, but you do want to speak loud enough and with enough ove-enunciation so your hard-of-hearing Great Grand-Uncle Clyde-O, who spent his entire working career as a roadie for all the good bands before the days of hearing protection can hear and understand you when you speak from behind a mask.

Kind of went into the weeds over masks there, didn't I?

This is 2020.  This is what June 2020 is shaping up to be like, Friends.  And now there are riots.  I don't think we learned anything from our Bigass Reset.  I think right now, if nothing else, the Reset has put us all on edge even more.  We're not better people.  We're still at each other's throats.  It's almost as though we're determined that, if a virus isn't going to wipe us out, we'll do the job ourselves, thankyouverymuch. None of this is okay.

I still want to believe our brightest days are ahead of us, Friends.  It's awful hard right now not to wonder if that's because the dumpster's on fire this year.  

Anyway.  If you see me out and about and I have on a mask and my eyes look really manic, I'm not having a spell or a psychotic episode.  I didn't get into the trucker-pills or mushrooms.  I'm trying to smile at you with just my eyes.  I'm a smiler.  It's what I do.  It's what I'm gonna do. 

And if that doesn't work, you can bet I'm going to start breaking out the dirty and inappropriate jokes, delivered with an enhanced indoor voice, with impeccable enunciation, to get you to laugh behind your mask.  

Because this June, instead of "2019's Misery But This Time With Masks!" our tune should be "Love and Laughter and Healing."