The mask dream

I had a dream last night that left me feeling edgy and stressed. It was in a dreamscape I call "Dream Scranton" - a nightmarish, broken-down (that is, even more broken-down) version of the real place, always under a jet-black sky. Which is odd, because (as I would later recall) the dream wasn't set in Scranton, nor was it initially set at night. I wanted to remember it, to record it, but upon waking, I quickly began to forget details.

Then I saw this:

...and it all came flooding back.

The U.S. is reopening. Stores, restaurants, workplaces...the COVID-19 pandemic isn't over, far from it. It's still burning strong. But people have gotten bored, and restless. They want to ignore this problem and get on with their lives, just like we as a society have ignored so many other problems.

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.

In my dream the Barnes & Noble in Wilkes-Barre Township was reopening. This is actually a pretty heartbreaking situation: Two years ago a tornado tore through the Arena Hub Plaza at closing time. No one was killed, but a lot of stores were badly damaged, and some needed to be demolished. Barnes & Noble was salvageable, despite having the tornado clip the store, but it was closed down for seven months while it was rebuilt, reopening at the end of January 2019. In March 2020, it would be closed down again, this time due to the pandemic. It has not reopened yet. But in my dream, it had.

I took a bus there. I'm not sure why. It's been about thirty years since I've taken a bus anywhere. But I took a bus there, and was thrilled to be back in a store. A store full of people. And books! How I had missed being amongst books. I browsed, half-dazed, opening up books at random, looking at the illustrations, reading passages.

And then I realized I had forgotten a mask.

True story.

I felt absolute terror. How could I put everyone else at risk like this? And then I looked around at all the people in the bookstore with me, and noticed that none of them were wearing masks, either.

Oh, fuck, I have to get out of here, I thought. I had to go home. Get my mask.

Only it was late at night, the buses had stopped running,* and I was twelve miles from home with no mask and no way to get home.

Dozens of people responded to that first tweet above with examples of their own mask dreams. The stress is getting to us. Getting into our dreams. Dreams about forgetting to wear a mask. Dreams about other people not wearing theirs.

The U.S. is starting to reopen, and I'm worried things are about to get a lot worse.

Just wear a damned mask, mmmkay?

*In reality, we started late-night bus service in this area a while back. It's almost 3:00 AM and I just heard one go by.