The Light Side of COVID

The havoc COVID-19 has wreaked is no laughing matter, yet you can’t help but chuckle at the lifestyle that has become our new global norm. Wearing masks, keeping each other at (triple) arm’s length, and constantly sanitizing our hands are understood, even, to some extent, by two-year-olds. I polled people around the world – and closer to home, in Baltimore – about any new-norm experiences that provided them with the much-needed comic relief we could all use, especially in these times.

Dye-anu!

At 7:20 a.m., Soozie Seiden was getting ready for her 8 a.m. Hair Dot-T client, when the doorbell rang; her husband, Kurt, announced that the first client had arrived.

“My first client? My first client isn’t until 8 o’clock,” she told Kurt.

“Well, she’s here!” he said.

Soozie went downstairs and found her masked client already sitting in her chair. When Soozie mentioned to the woman that she was early, her muffled voice from under her mask said that she tried to get there as early as she could. Okay, Soozie thought, as she draped a cape on her. While Soozie mixed the hair dye, they chatted. When Soozie inquired how her kids were doing, the woman updated her on her son, Ezra.

This information still didn’t give Soozie a clue as to the fact that this client had come not only at the wrong time but a week early. Her 8 a.m. appointment also had a son, Ezra, and the two women shared the same height, build, and hair color!

“Actually, this woman had a full inch of gray regrowth,” Soozie realized, in retrospect. “The true 8 o’clock client was a very regular client, so she couldn’t possibly have so much regrowth.  That should have been my first clue, but at 7:20 I was not on my game yet! The clue that finally tipped me off was that this woman was going to New York. I knew my 8 o’clock was going to Florida. That’s when I knew I was in a little bit of trouble!”

To confirm her suspicion, Soozie asked the woman her first name, followed by, “Oh my! You are not my 8 o’clock!”

“What are you talking about?” the woman asked.

That’s when Soozie broke the news: This lady’s appointment was actually scheduled for next Thursday.

“I had no idea what her color was – if it was the right or wrong color – and she already had half of the dye on her head! I started panicking. Trying hard to keep my composure, I looked up the woman’s correct hair dye color. Fortunately, it was only a half a shade off. It was the same level and almost the same formula; all I had to do was add a half ounce of a slightly different color.”

As Soozie was finishing the dye job, her 8 a.m. client showed up. The two clients were commiserating – social distance style. One sat in Soozie’s facial room, the other sat in her chair, their dye color processing on their heads while they talked to each other. By the time the first woman checked out, the two women were laughing.

“It was the weirdest scenario I’ve ever encountered!” admits Soozie, who is grateful that everything turned out so well in could have been a bad situation. “It took me a good 20 minutes to pull myself together after the mistaken appointment left. That could have gone so wrong – I was dying her hair dark black…she could have been a blonde!!”

Who is That Masked Man (or Woman)?

Soozie isn’t the only one who experienced a scenario of mistaken identity because of the required mask. One evening, when Penina Steinbruch and her husband were taking a walk, they decided to sit in the park for a while.

“There was this annoying teen-aged girl sitting on ‘our’ bench,” shares Penina. “I’d like to think I could recognize my own daughter anywhere, but this girl was wearing a mask. I only realized it was her when she turned away and I saw her from the back!”

Chana E., a teacher in Bnei Brak, has been similarly challenged by the many mask-wearing high school girls she passes on the street. “I can’t find the face under the mask, so I don’t know if the girl passing near me is my student this year or one from last year. I don’t want them to think I forgot them so quickly! So, I look deeply into their eyes (so impolite!),” says Chana, “look and look until I either recognize familiar eyes and say a big hello, or realize that it’s someone I don’t know and mumble ‘excuse me....’”

Birthday Blunders and Wishes

Sometimes, it is not a case of mistaken identity but an auditory issue caused by the mask, which can prove equally embarrassing. Chana Rivka Weiss shares:

“At Adventure Park USA, we tried to communicate with the girl running the go-karts. We asked her whether the mini-cars were available, so my kids could ride those, instead. We couldn’t quite hear her response, so we repeated the question. She said it’s closed for now and she doesn’t know when they’ll reopen and that it was her birthday. We broke out in a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday,’ and everyone else in line joined in. When we finished our laps around the track, we again wished her a happy birthday but from much closer since she was the attendant who was returning our car to the queue. That’s when she told us, ‘It’s not my birthday. It’s my first day…on the job.’”

Speaking of happy birthdays, Cressel Miriam Fletcher of Ramat Bet Shemesh, remarks, “In England, where most of our family lives, people were advised to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ as they washed their hands as a guide to how long it should take. When our grandson turned 12, we were all asked to send video clips of our good wishes. Another grandson sent a clip of himself washing his hands, with great enthusiasm and efficiency, adding Manny’s name to the standard sound track.”

From the (Masked) Mouths of Babes

On the topic of kids, Esti shares this story about her two- and four-year-old nephews who came for a backyard visit at her home in Brooklyn last April. “We were only doing socially-distanced outdoor visits at the time,” says Esti, “and I was curious how much they knew about what was going on. I asked the older one when he was going to come to my house to play. He looked at me with a straight face and said, ‘I’m waiting until the President says I can!’”

Yehudit Pessin of Beitar, in Israel, shares this conversation overheard between her children, Esther, age almost five, and Nochum, age seven:

Nochum: “Sara Rivka [the baby] killed a mosquito bite [what Yehudit’s little kids call mosquitoes] with her hands. We have to wash her hands.”

Esther: “Yeah, maybe it had Corona!”

Yehudit also mentions, “My four-year-old niece was looking at some pre-Corona days pictures. She said, ‘They’re so close together.’ In truth, it was a normal picture of people from normal times. Can a young child even remember what a normal world is like?”

By now, taking COVID precautions have become the expected new normal – by kids and adults, alike. Surie S. shares, “To stop her kids from badgering the baby, my sister-in-law enacted a ‘social-distancing’ policy in her house! It’s really cute to hear her little three- and five-year-old talk about social distancing!”

After Raizy Mund gave birth to her baby in the summer, her mother-in-law brought lots of presents, as usual. “One of the presents was a three-piece outfit – a stretchie, blanket and...face mask!!” says Raizy. “Only after a few seconds did we realize that it’s a bonnet!”

Sarah P. mentions, “My one-year-old baby started talking during COVID and one of his first words was ‘mask’. It was funny…and sad.”

COVID Takeaways…But, No Take-out

Chana E. of Bnei Brak tells me, “A number of people we know who have been extremely “religious” about taking COVID precautions are now sick with Coronavirus. They say, ‘Kol habore’ach min haCovid, haCovid rodef acharav!’(If someone runs away from honor, honor will chase after him.)

An anonymous Brit mentions the humor she found in a recently-ended UK government offer called ‘Eat Out, Help Out,’ which ran during the month of August. “It was a great offer. You got to eat out in restaurants for half price, thereby helping out the economy; you couldn’t buy take-out with this offer. Simultaneously, they are urging us to lay low and keep social-distancing and wear masks – just not in restaurants. They were bursting full for the weeks that the offer was on.”

Should We Laugh or Cry?

Someone posted a cartoon of a chassan and kallah on one of my WhatsApp chats that reads: “It’s only a matter of time until ‘What kind of mask does he wear?’ is a shidduch question.”

Well, guess what? Soon after, another post was forwarded to me that appeared on Simcha Spot chat. It was dubbed a “crazy dating story.”

So I was dating a girl on Zoom because of the whole COVID situation, and things were getting kind of serious. She told me she had an important question for me. I’m a pretty open guy so I really am chilled when it comes to things like this. She then asked me what kind of mask I wear! This is the world we are living in in 2020! Ha! We both laughed, and yes, we did get married!

Mazal tov on the simcha, especially to the kallah for not judging a guy by his mask!