Dispatches from the Time of the Virus VI: The Stupid and Dangerous Are Strong with This One...and Many Others

Wear your masks and I'll stop with the selfies...

     Sometimes, when I recite events through dialogue, some people wonder how much embellishment occurs; I can guarantee that 98-100 percent of the dialogue quoted here is accurate/verbatim.

     Saturday, May 9, I picked up dinner for my lovely wife Val from a Vietnamese restaurant on Buffalo’s West Side on my way home from grocery shopping; I will not name it here because it was the victim of the following douche nozzle’s actions and did not cause/precipitate them.

     As I entered the restaurant, a sign in the now-deserted downstairs bar/serving area told people to go upstairs to pick up their meals; as I headed to the stairs, I could hear that someone was already up there. It turned out to be a man, about age 65, working for one of those food-delivery businesses, picking up two or three orders. He was talking to a staffer of the restaurant, so I stayed on the stairs to leave some distance; this turned out to be a good choice.

     “I know it wasn’t you people, but remember, the USA fought and beat the Japanese in the Pacific as well as Germany in Europe in World War II,” this genius said. “What I mean is that we need to fight this alleged virus. We need to fight and attack it, and not wear masks and gloves and stay separate and be afraid of it.”  He expounded on a few more similar topics, with lots of “you know?” tossed in. He then noted the orders he was picking up said they were for “John,” and that his name was “Joe,” and he proceeded to recite each order from memory to confirm that he was the proper person to pick up these deliveries.

     All the while, I kept hoping for him to just pick up the food and leave; when he did, just as I had feared, he was not wearing a mask. He noticed me for the first time, smiled, lowered his voice a bit and said, “Hey, how are you doing?” “FINE,” I spit back through gritted teeth, and I think he got the message, because he slinked against the wall and virtually ran out of the restaurant, probably not even hearing me call after him,” “Nice mask, idiot.”

     I’d like to write that I commiserated with the restaurant staff over this idiot, but it turns out that they forgot to check the online ordering account and hadn’t started Val’s dinner yet, so I went back downstairs for 5 minutes or so while they made it and I finally left for home.