My Encounter With The Glove/Mask/Cough Police

I don’t get out much. Even before the pandemic I didn’t get out much. My husband and I live on a farm in a small village of around 600 people, most living on their own farms. A majority of the village residents like to be left alone. You don’t live where we do because you want to have cookouts with the neighbors.

By farm I mean we have 32 acres of land with no crops or dairy cows, etc. We have what they call a “Gentleman’s Farm” which is a nice way of saying we have a cute little hobby farm that does not supply goods for our country. Our farm serves as a safe haven rescue for discarded or unwanted animals.

Since the pandemic and shelter in place mandate by our governor, I’ve been in town briefly maybe 3 times. We have enough human and animal food to keep us going for quite some time. So my husband and I decided to literally shelter in place for the duration unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Today was an absolutely necessary day to leave the farm. Armed with gloves, masks, sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and other stuff I made my way down our 1/3 mile lane and opened (then closed) our gate bearing a sign that commands, ‘Keep Out”. The gate and sign were both in place long before the pandemic.

I tend to frequent smaller local stores since I believe they desperately need any business I can give them. It had been a while since I’d been out and about and I didn’t expect what I was met with: the Glove/Mask/Cough Police around every corner.

I was mentally “frisked” by the first police when I put my purchases down on the checkout conveyer belt. The police (cashier) pointed at a bucket at the end of the aisle and informed me that’s where I was to put my gloves before I left. He said this to me repeatedly as if English were not my first language.

I was a bit stunned at his insistence. “That way we know things are taken care of properly”, he continued. Properly. Really? As if I were too stupid to take my own gloves home (out of his jurisdiction) to dispose of them “properly”.

I thanked the nice police man and told him I would take care of it. He continued to insist I put them in the bucket. This from someone who had neither a mask or gloves on.

Adding insult to injury he said, “You can’t wear them more than once. You have to put a new pair on for each store you go to.” I assured him I had a whole new box of gloves in the car just waiting to be worn only once.

“You have to take them off before you touch your car you know”, the Glove/Mask Wikipedia Police Man continued. “You really should just put them in the bucket.” I had my reasons for resisting his demand, I didn’t want to touch their store door without gloves on when I exited neither did I want to shoulder the door open (risking contamination) on the way out.

By now it had become a wrestling match of wills (at least to me) as the police cashier continued to insist I do what he said for no apparent reason other than he wanted me to. I was digging my heels firmly into the stained, worn, crunchy carpet in front of the register. My gloves would not be put into bucket purgatory. He was NOT getting them. No sir! Even if he put me in cuffs.

Then he started insulting my face mask. “You know, you have to wash those masks”, as if it carried the obvious filth of a mask worn for a million years without being washed. “It’s a brand new mask and it’s my first time wearing it”, I replied. His face very loudly voiced his disbelief. His eye roll had me on the edge of potentially becoming very unladylike.

I’d mentally sized him up when he first insisted I put the gloves in the bucket. He was smaller and older than me, I knew I could outrun him if he decided to try and wrestle the gloves off me before I left. It would create a scene, of course, but it might be worth it. The thought caused me to laugh.

“This is no laughing matter”, the man wearing neither mask, gloves or using sanitizer scolded. I wanted to reply, “Sir, it’s either I laugh or say some things out loud I’ve said only in my brain until now”.

And with that we ended our pleasant conversation and I literally looked over my shoulder to see if he was following me to the glove bucket of lost souls. He disappeared and I imagined he was looking out some spy hole to see if I took my gloves off before I opened the car door. I did, and smiled and waved in his direction. Was I losing it? Maybe.

At the next stop I made it all the way to the checkout before just very slightly coughing — the first time I’d coughed all day. I thought the cashier was going to hit the ground as if he was being fired at by a machine gun in an old James Cagney gangster movie. “I have bronchitis. I get it every spring. It lasts for 3 months.”

Then the coughing police cashier started in, “You really shouldn’t come out in public when you’re coughing”. Yikes, really? Because I coughed barely just 1 time through a mask and into my sleeve as the coughing rules demand?

Again, this self-appointed police officer had neither mask or gloves on. But what he did have was half the people in line behind me agreeing with his opinion of me: I was a coughing, mask and glove wearing virus carrier sent directly from Hell to infect them all.

At that moment the things I’d been saying in my brain were on the verge of being exposed. In that split second I had to make the decision to be unladylike or to smile and walk away.

“You all be safe now”, I managed to say out loud. Those words were not anything like the ones begging to active volcano erupt onto the unsuspecting shoppers or cough police cashier.

When all was said and done, I was glad I chose to try and diffuse a volatile situation by being pleasant and walking away. And I’d like to think maybe my few kind words and positive attitude helped lift the haggard spirits of some stressed soul, if only for a brief moment.

At the end of the day I have to admit it was immensely satisfying for me to properly throw away my own used once gloves when I got safely home, laughing as I did it.

Jackie Deems

Copyright 2020