Gary is doing some magical thinking. He’s collecting face masks as amulets to protect him from the virus. The more face masks he has, the safer we are, though we can only wear one at a time, generally (see below for the exception).
I tried to make a face mask, but as we know the spirits of evil murdered my sewing machine after one seam.
Gary’s much happier stimulating the economy, so here is his face mask collection.
Our first masks were N-95s, because of course Gary did the research.

This mask caused friction in our marriage. Right after it came, doctors began begging for N-95s, and he wouldn’t make the sacrifice.
Turns out the N95 was a construction grade one, not a medical grade one, so he turned on it and picked up two KN95s.

I was quite happy with mine. It’s washable and it covers my wattle. I may permanently integrate it in my wardrobe for that reason. When I’m in my sunglasses and this wattle-cupping mask I look only forty-five years old.
Gary decided this mask by itself was insufficient and needed to be topped by another layer of mask, the sporty, fashionable overmask.

I might have gone with the layered look, but more masks arrived before I had a chance to leave the house: a very snug canvas Chinese mask that Gary couldn’t even fit over his German nose, and a cute one with clouds.

I liked the cloud mask so much so that I believe I said, “Please stop buying masks,” but it was another mask too snug for Gary, so he bought two types of mask extenders.


Mind you, Gary hasn’t left the house for weeks at this point. Then a box of 50 paper masks arrived that he bought a month before.

He started wearing those disposable masks whenever he passed me in the hall or heard my voice. When he left the house for his nose test, he wore the white mask (without the coordinating black overmask, mind you.)
I don’t know when he ordered the next mask that arrived, but this was the ideal, the ultimate, the one mask to rule them all: the blue Take Care mask. I liked this one so much I said, “Cut it out with the fucking masks, already.”

Gary said, “I will. This is the best mask. It has a pocket for a filter and it fits so I won’t have to use those extenders I bought for the cloud mask.”
“So no more masks, right?”
“Well, I won’t buy any more.” He paused. “There might be some still in the pipeline.”
There were: these individually-wrapped wrapped K-95s:

“But look,” he said when I complained. “These are individually wrapped. And they’re from China,” because I guess he wants a mask from every continent for his international mask collection.
When he went out to get his blood draw last week, he came in and gushed, “I found a mask in the car! They had it for me when I got the nose test, but I already had a mask on, so I stowed it in the glove compartment. It’s the best mask! It’s disposable, and it’s yellow.” Face it, from a practical point of view all these masks have been disposable.
Since then no new masks have arrived, but that’s not to say he’s stopped buying them. I wonder how long Gary will keep trying to keep us healthy by laying money on the mask altar.
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