I go to Home Depot at least twice a week, so I can definitely say I was there at the start of this “movement”…. have you noticed it? Increasingly, at any minute of the day, there will be several people defiantly walking the cavernous aisles without their mandatory mask. It’s the same demographic that you’d expect. Angry white people, definitely straddling the borderline of “hick”, who stalk the cavernous aisles uncovered and looking hard at everyone, daring them to say something…
I remember the week it happened. Was there a wingut blog post someplace about launching the attack? Because up until that first week in October, the mask requirement were maintained. Maybe not completely, of course – with noses uncovered or some puffing old dude with a chin diaper – but mostly. But since then, it’s been an ongoing occurrence at every Home Depot I’ve visited regardless of location.
The first time – oh, it was so dramatic. Honestly, it was the first confrontation in a year & half that I had seen, outside of the incredibly addictive subReddit called “Public Freakout“.
“Sir! Sir! You need to put on a mask!” I could hear it from a couple rows away and heading towards me. Then they passed, a 30-something dude pulling along his 4-year old son fast, nearly running, with the unfortunate orange vested employee hot on their heels.
“I’m not sick and he’s not sick!” the guy called out over his shoulder and sprinted along, towards the outdoor garden section. The early days of the Rebellion were uncharted waters and still tentative, so he did offer up an excuse, or maybe plea of forgiveness… “We’re going outside anyway!” which they did, and the poor Home Depot guy just stopped, shook his head and turned around…. let the plant ladies deal with him.
But then quickly, I there were more that same week, to where I would anticipate it and would never be disappointed. Personally, I like it. Not because I support it, but because:
* One – Home Depot is so jet hangar huge that, frankly, it’s like being outside anyway so actual risk of infection from the Magats is low
* Two – It’s like wearing a neon sign that says “I’m an asshole”.
Seriously, though, it’s their attitude that cracks me up. Always on the offensive, that look in their eyes, staring everyone down, and just hoping for someone to say something and trigger their righteous tirade. It doesn’t happen. (Like a good biologist, I should track one of them and see how they respond to a fellow maskless douche.)
Mathematically, there just has to be, in the past few months a sublime moment of comedy when an unmasked revolutionary stood in line to buy…..
