Remember Pebbles, the baby of Fred and Wilma Flintstone? I
think I saw her grandmother at the dentist office last week. She was wearing orange
knee-highs, an orange mini skirt, a white blouse with orange dots the size of tea cups and she had a short tuft of gray hair on the top of her head that stood
straight up and was tied with an orange bow as big as the bone in Pebbles’ do. At
first glance I thought the circus must be in town. On second glance I had to
snap my mouth shut because my jaw had dropped. Even if I didn’t hate the color
orange I would have hated that outfit on sheer principle alone. It belonged on
a six year old. What would possess a woman clearly over sixty-five to dress that
way? She had on our state required mask, though, so she at least got that
right.
Everyone who worked at the dentist’s office was wearing pink
plastic gowns and pink masks. Actually they were each wearing two masks plus
the plastic “bug shields” that covered their whole faces--whatever they call
them. If I had to pick one of them out in a lineup I wouldn’t be able to ID the
perp. I don’t think I would have been able to ID Orange Lady either if she was
wearing normal clothing but she should have gotten a ticket for hurting my eyes
with those neon knee socks and her Mary-Jane shoes firmly planted on the floor
as she tried to kept her knees pressed tightly together so those of us sitting
on the other side of the room couldn’t see her yahoo. Her skirt was so short
you couldn’t help looking to see if it was playing peak-boo.
My dentist is located in a small town 45 minutes away from
where I live. Ten years ago it was listed on the Southern Poverty Law Centers’ Hate
Map, but I just looked at the map again and the town has been removed. Must be the
local branches of the White Nationalists and Michigan Militia had moved or died
out. After one of our dental appointments my husband and I had lunch in a place
near-by that had hate group posters all over the walls that we didn’t notice until after
we’d placed our orders, so we made the best of it and did some seriously scary eavesdropping
before we got the heck out of there. It gave us great pleasure a year later
when we learned they'd gone out of business. Its owner is probably still
scratching his head, trying to figure out why he didn't get any repeat business.
Close to the dentist office last week, I stumbled into a gas
station that reminded me of that group of misfits at the closed-up restaurant. I’m
quite sure the owners were hard core anti-maskers which means they’d also be
anti-science and members of the Looking for Trouble Club. The four adults working
there were not wearing masks and looked ready to tear you apart with their bare
teeth if anyone dared to point out that our state just toughen up the mandated
mask law to now include a $500 fine for not wearing one in public places. The
law also requires businesses’ to refuse to do business with anyone not wearing
a mask and if they blatantly ignore the law they can lose their license to operate. We’re
already had two people killed over mask fights so it was tense standing in a line behind seven masked people waiting to pay for our purchases. Thankfully, no one challenged
the workers in their ‘bull pen’ taking money for gas and making pizza that they
sell by the slice. And ignorance of the new changes in the laws won’t wash
either. We all got Civil Defense warnings on our phones, radios and TVs and on
your phone you couldn’t use it again without clicking the message off your screen with
an acknowledgement had you read it.
I get the whole “I live in a free country” argument. I get
that masks are uncomfortable. I get that some people don’t like to be told what
to do. What I don’t get is why people don’t comply with taking commonsense measures for the
greater good of humanity. Wear a damn mask! Health experts all over the whole
world say they help to keep the virus from spreading and no matter what our president
says, those health experts from the other side of the world aren’t factoring in
his chances of re-election into their medical advice. We wear seat belts to
save lives. Window washers on high rises wear safety harnesses. Race car drives
wear flame-retardant suits, and plenty of jobs requires safety helmets and gloves. We wear clothes to protect our privates from getting injured or
from burning out other people’s eyeballs.
And in case you’re still wondering, Orange Lady was not wearing panties
under her mini skirt. ©
