Sergeant K
This week, a country artist wrote a song called “Six Feet Apart,” and my new goal in life is to never hear it. I looked up the lyrics and had flashbacks to writing poetry in third grade when I, too, tried to rhyme “out” with “around.” I feel like there are 50/50 odds on whether the We Love Viruses Coalition (WeLoViC) will use it as an anthem… or protest its existence and storm Luke Combs’s house dressed like knockoff G.I. Joe dolls.
That WeLoViC, man, they are something. The hunting for reasons to do the opposite of what anyone tells them must take up a lot of their time. Around these parts, the lead hunters are Becky and Karen. (I did not change their names to protect their innocence because their names are exactly what make this fun.)
Earlier this week, Becky responded to a post regarding Menard’s policy mandating customers to wear masks by slyly suggesting we should all “wear butt plugs” to keep our farts in. Apparently, Becky wants us all to walk around with squeaky little gas expulsions while picking up extra lumber for, oh, say, a garden or something.
Karen agrees with Becky a lot, though she was not pro-butt plug (which is the new thing we all have to pick a side on, I guess?) but she also believes “not wearing a mask” is written somewhere in the Constitution. Those WeLoViC members seem desperate for the good ol’ days when the life expectancy was about 36 years old and everyone died of Oregon Trail diagnoses. Karen, in the least shocking development ever, believes the “20-somethings” are to blame for a lot of the issues.
Shawn, who may or may not be married to Becky, is refusing to shop anywhere that requires masks and doesn’t understand why “liberals” are so okay with “living in fear” all the time. This is a rallying cry by white people with guns threatening Michigan lawmakers.
Cautious and fearful are two different things. I wear a helmet on my super cool scooter because I’d like to protect my head should an accident occur. I don’t assume an accident will occur and the only time I worry about it, really, is when a bug violently flies up my nose and my natural instinct is to physically move in ways not conducive to staying upright.
Michigan lawmakers who put on bulletproof vests were fearful because a bunch of lunatics were attempting to (not remotely peaceably) assemble inside the house chambers. However, the gun-toting military wannabes (but probably too scared to be) are the ones demonstrating fear. Or idiocy. Take your pick. Either way, they are not “good people” that the governor should reason with. Being armed to that degree does not invite a lot of reasonable dialogue.
Karen and Becky and other WeLoViC enthusiasts have probably never gone on the internet and screamed about businesses with “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” signs. (This is a guess based logically on the fact that Fox News has never led them down this particular thought road.) They have probably posted somewhere between 3 and 81 memes about the horror of Colin Kaepernick’s protests, the Black Lives Matter movement, changed their profile picture to a Blue Lives Matter flag, and repost everything they can get their hands on that says something to the effect of “Immigrants need to follow our rules.”
Someone should maybe mention to Karen and Becky that the punishment for not wearing a mask into some of these locations is that those people don’t get to go into these locations. As far as I know, Menard’s isn’t ripping their children away and putting them into cages because they “didn’t follow the rules” especially because there is a “legal path to citizenship” if “citizenship” in this instance is “getting to buy a new light fixture.”
Karen, Becky, Cindy, and Teresa are also very concerned about people who are not following the arrows at grocery stores, being very quick to comment when they see such activity. (Karen and Becky use it as proof that other people feel the same way as them; Cindy and Teresa use it in the same way they probably used it in fourth grade when they reported to our teacher that I didn’t say hi to them in the hallway and, therefore, I missed recess to “talk about” why I upset them.) There was also the Great Culver’s Debacle of Thursday when they saw people eating on the tables outside the restaurant. I wasn’t sure we were going to make it through that one.
In any case, I applaud these WeLoViCs for transposing their fear into unabashed support for “the economy” which can look like empathy for those struggling financially if you squint just hard enough.
I’m not sure America will ever regain its reputation for being a strong country when we have white people with assault weapons screaming for their right to get a haircut. That one is gonna be difficult to overcome.
But I believe Becky can get us there. All we need is mass distribution of butt plugs.
