I don't know much about kids except for having been one a long time ago and the occasional ones I meet working at the library.
But I have found a small, fascinating thing regarding them in the short history of this pandemic. When required masks were first discussed, and as the idea of them slowly formed up, I remember regularly reading about how of course there was no way in hell kids were going to be able to handle masks, and that it would be obvious to anyone who dealt regularly with kids that we'd have to take into account their complete inability to deal with the strangeness and challenge of wearing a mask.
So I thought: Okay, I don't know kids. I guess this must be true.
But now we are pretty deep into our mask mandates, and I have found that every single kid over the age of three that I have seen at the library has been great at mask wearing. The toddlers I have seen aren't perfect at the mask wearing, but they're not terrible either.
You know who has been terrible at mask wearing?
Old people.
Old people and Republicans.
And lots and lots of old Republicans.
As usual in America we worried again about the wrong people.
It might be a feature, not a bug.
This matches my observations out here; kids just take the masks in stride. And mostly adults do, too. I think they take them off just to go to Trump rallies.
ReplyDeleteThey might. I don't know. Most of the mask violators I see are very physically disabled or just really decrepit people, usually older, who don't wear them properly or just treat them casually, with them hanging off their faces or below their noses. At worst I have only gotten occasional hints of "political" rebellion against masks.
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