Pandemic Leftovers

Anyone need a 25-gallon drum of hand sanitizer?

Photo: Tai's Captures/Unsplash

Every era leaves behind its flotsam and jetsam—posters, buttons, Livestrong rubber bracelets, hot pants, leaflets, what-have-you. The Covid Era will be no different. In fact, it might be the most flotsam-y and jetsam-y of all eras, if the looks of my front hallway are any indication.

For most of us, the beginning of the pandemic was a shopping frenzy. First, when Covid was still a weird, distant flu that cropped up in a nursing home or two, I began buying cute cloth masks. This was an innocent moment when I was still self-conscious about wearing a mask and wanted to look casual, breezy, stylish — Oh, I just threw this on, no big deal! — rather than worried and cautious. I got a few cloth masks, and then a few more. It was hard not to buy them because every store had their own cute masks for sale and buying them felt like a gesture of support, 10 or 15 bucks thrown their way.

Then, as the news became more grim and wearing a mask began to seem familiar, a friend gave me a KN-95, which felt like it was actually protecting me (something the cute cloth masks really never did). I wore the one she gave me until it started to shred, even though I knew it was meant to be used only a couple of times. A convert, I begin buying them by the boatload. The cloth masks went into a basket, never to…