This is a True Story

A light coming from deep inside the tunnel signals that a subway is approaching the station.  I can hear the B train rumbling toward 145th Street, so I pick up my tea from the wooden bench I have been sitting on and begin to walk further down the platform.  I see a family hurrying down the stairs to meet the train.  They are slowed down by the fact that the young son is trying to carry a book bag that looks like a navy blue boulder with wheels on it and a razor a scooter.

The family consists of  a mother, father, sister and brother.  They look like recent additions to the neighborhood, and perhaps they own a brownstone nearby.   The mother has long, flaming red hair that is pulled back into a ponytail, and her daughter is almost her height.   Both of them have on white surgical masks.

The previous evening, when I returned home from work, my mother reported that the block next to Chloe's school had been barricaded by police.  She thought that there had been a shooting and an investigation was in progress.  She later learned that a man who lived on that block had been taken to Bellevue with symptoms of Ebola.  He had recently returned from treating patients in Guinea as a member of Doctors Without Borders.

I assume that this is the reason that the family is in the train station wearing emergency room attire.  I am alternately confused, amused, and angered.  My first reaction to foolishness is usually a visceral one, but I try to avoid leaping to the worst conclusions about people.  I tell myself that maybe the mother and daughter are sick and trying to protect us from their germs as they make their way to work and school.

However, chances are that this is not the case.  Their masks make a clear statement to me that they are seeking protection from those around them.  I assume that this family is  educated (or at least literate) and they are aware of the ways that Ebola can be spread.  Why, then, do they not understand that unless they are expecting bodily fluids to fly into their nostrils and mouths, the white masks are unnecessary?

Do they work for the CDC and know something that I don't?

Do they not realize that they are a conspicuous minority and their masks make them look obnoxious?

Does how one appears to one's neighbors even matter in the face of a potential health crisis?

Does all pretense of liberalism disappear when one feels threatened?

I get off the train at 86th Street trying to think about what I am going to say at my first Parent Teacher Conference at my new school- but I am still irritated by people in masks a week before Halloween. As I walk swiftly down Central Park West I pass an African man selling The New York Times and I look over to greet him.  This morning he is asleep and I wonder if it is because no one is buying his papers. As I turn the corner of 89th Street, I see a woman with a red pony tail, a teenage girl, a father, and a boy riding a scooter.  None of them have masks on.