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Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Rant #2,642: Roll With the Flow



I’m back!
 
Yesterday was a bit of a tough day in the morning, and tomorrow should be likewise, but sometimes you just have to roll with the flow, and tomorrow, I will be able to rant and rant and rant some more.
 
Yesterday was just a little impossible, and that is why I was not able to do what I love to do on Monday morning.
 
So today is April 27, the weather is getting warmer, and the living supposedly will be easier now that a lot of restrictions are being lifted all around us.
 
Yesterday morning, after the major task I had to do was completed, I decided to bring in two bags of cans and bottles that need to be recycled, so I went to my local supermarket to do that.
 
The recycling area in this particular supermarket is enclosed, with little or no ventilation, as it always smells like, well, beer and soda every time you go in there to use the machines.
 
When I arrived, there was no one there, so I went about getting rid of all of my bottles and cans, and things were going pretty smoothly, as the machine I was using was working pretty well.
 
When I was about 90 percent done, a fellow came in with a shopping cart full of cans and bottles—he must have had about 1,000 of them in that cart.
 
The sign on the door says that you can only recycle I believe 140 cans and bottles at a time, and this guy had seven times that amount in his cart.
 
I told him that he could not recycle all of those things at one sitting, and I also told him to put on a mask, because he wasn’t wearing one. It was around his neck, but not on his face.
 
He put on the mask, but he continued to put one bottle in the machine he was using after another, as if I hadn’t said a thing to him.
 
Then about two minutes later, another person came into the recycling area. He had a bag full of cans to get rid of, but he had no mask on, and it was nowhere in sight.
 
I told him to put on a mask. He started to get irritable, yelling at me in the filthiest of language that I am not going to repeat here, and he actually came up to me and cocked his arm, ready to punch me in the mouth.
 
I looked at the guy, and almost had to laugh.
 
He was probably in his late 70s or early 80s, and I promptly said to him as he got in my face without his mask on, “If you touch me I will sue you for every dollar you ever made. Put on your mask.”
 
And he did, and as he did, a few minutes later, I was done, and I left.
 
When I went into the supermarket to cash in my receipts, I told the manager behind the counter about what had happened, and they dispatched someone to the recycling area to see what was going on.
 
I wiped my hands of the entire episode and moved on.
 
We are in a period where rules to some people evidently mean nothing, whether you were in a situation like I was, or even if you are in a confrontation with police, and you are obviously resisting arrest, or you simply don’t want to follow store rules by not wearing a mask.
 
I don’t like wearing a mask either, and I am sure people don’t like to be picked up by police for outstanding warrants, but hey, that is the law, and it has been proven time and time again that you will get in trouble one way or the other if you don’t follow the law.

After all, this is not an anarchy, although some people evidently think that it is just that.
 
Look, I am tying two things together that really have no link at all, but they really have to do with breaking the law, at different levels, of course.
 
At least in the instance of mask wearing, I have noticed that the trends have changed a bit during the past few months.
 
At one time, younger people were the ones not wearing their masks, and that still continues, but I have noticed an increasing number of older people not wearing face coverings, and being brazen about it too.
 
Why is this?
 
I guess that many of them have gotten their shots, and they feel that once they get the shots, they are done following any rules related to mask wearing, because they are fully protected, or at least they think that they are.
 
Of course they aren’t, but after months of being told what to do, they have had it up to here with rules, so they take it upon themselves to ignore them.
 
Me, I’m a rules guy, and although I don’t like wearing a mask, I do it because at least in New York State, you cannot go into a retail establishment without one.
 
That is the edict, that is the law, that is the mandate, whatever you want to call it, but you have to wear a mask in certain situations in the state, whether you like it or not.
 
So I do it, not to make a political statement, but I do it because I feel that at least right now, not only is it the law, but it is the right thing to do.
 
And if I have to do it, you have to do it too.
 
Look, you don’t have to believe everything we are being force fed about the virus—I certainly don’t—but wearing a mask is not a political statement, it is just the right thing to do now.
 
So when I see people flaunt their “independence” and their indifference right in front of me, it bothers me.
 
And like I told the gentleman yesterday who was ready to punch me, you should know better.
 
As I have said time and time again, I wonder whether I did the right thing in allowing a vaccine to enter my body that has not had ample testing done to it to make sure that it is safe.
 
I read now that the Pfizer vaccine is being questioned in Israel for a rise in heart problems among those who have taken it over there.
 
There have been some problems with the Moderna vaccine, too, and don’t get me started about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
 
When we had that last major pandemic 100 years ago, it actually took scientists 25 years to approve a vaccine—the latest vaccine won approval in just a few months.
 
Did I do the right thing to get my vaccine? What did I put into my body?
 
And those commercials we are seeing about the safety of the vaccines … well, I question the safety of stating that they are safe, when they might not be.
 
So did I personally do the right thing in getting the vaccine?
 
I still don’t know. The jury is out on that, and I would never tell anyone that they must get the vaccine.
 
But as long as we are in the situation that we are in, I will tell people to put on their masks.
 
Like I said, I roll with the flow, and the flow now is to mask up.
 
It is so easy to do, there is no reason—other than mental—not to do it.
 
So just do it, whether you believe it is doing anything or not.
 
It is the right thing to do right now, and hopefully, with lots of rules being lifted by the day, we won’t have to wear these horrid things that much longer. 

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