My mask will stay in place

The “Burn the Bra” movement caught me hook, line and sinker. Ah for the liberty of swinging low in a tight cheesecloth top while thumbing a ride… Those were the days, my friend, but just so you know: that will forever be my last burning.

I will not tonight dance around a bonfire started with all my masks. I don’t give a hoot what our president says: my mask will stay firmly in place. It hurts my ears, fogs up my glasses and stops deaf(ish) me from reading lips, but it saves me – and I’m not talking about a fortune in lipstick.

The Mask saves me from others’ spluttering; keeps me from inhaling the regurgitated staleness from the office’s aircon and that rotten egg smell Joburgers recently complained so about? I didn’t smell a thing. In fact, in the two years we have been forced to cover our noses, I haven’t sniffed a cold.

ALSO READ: The masks are off! Now we see who lives: the vaxxed or unvaxxed?

Yes, I got fluey a week ago but for that I have to thank my son who, for once, forgot his mask at home while out shopping. And it’s the shopping I worry about most. You don’t have to keep your distance, but I really, really, don’t want some stranger’s bodily fluids running my way, thank you very much. I maybe for the first time really get the Asians’ love of covering up.

Thirteen years ago I ran, maskless, across a Singaporean street in the rain – rain that burnt white drops into a wooden pipe I just bought Beloved. Those white drops are still on that pipe. For ever. And I now know why the Singaporeans all wore masks then: they knew about their city’s acid rain.

To those tinfoil-hatters telling me the common white-and-blue masks present a danger to the lungs as small fibres separate easily and are inhaled, I can just say to your perceived “lung cancer” threat: my ciggies will do that, not my mask.

So do burn your mask. Even fashion a bikini out of it for all I care. Acid rain, foul air, keeping colds and flu at bay – I don’t need an excuse. I’ll wear my mask because I know it keeps me safe.

Perhaps not safe from life’s little knocks, but I can’t wait for that mask to drop…