Okay, right up front let me make it clear, much as I’d love to be without it, I have no problems with mask wearing. I am triple vaccinated and – tempting fate – unlike three of my five kids, I have thus far managed to avoid contracting the dreaded lurgy in any of its various variants.

While on the subject, having seen a Mexican beer (Corona) and an American airline (Delta) suffer the misfortune of being co-branded with the virus, it’s chucklesome to see another airline tagged with the latest strain: British Airways must have been thrilled to see “BA.1” show up as the new kid on the block. Let’s hope it never gets to be “The World’s Favorite Variant.” Pan Am would of course have been a natural for a PANdemic but too late I’m afraid.

Moving right along though, it was 1976 (yes, it really was that far back) when George Benson released the hauntingly beautiful ‘This Masquerade’ – the late, great, Leon Russell wrote it. Listening to the song last week on a flight to Bermuda, it occurred to me that Leon could almost have been commenting on the pandemic pandemonium of recent times with the line,

“… searching but not finding understanding anywhere, we’re lost in a masquerade.”

And the mass ‘maskerade’ with which we’ve been living for two years now, certainly takes a lot of understanding. And at just about every turn on a New York to Bermuda trip last week, the nonsensical inconsistences were gobsmacking. The root of the current problem is the fact that, outside of travel, things have loosened up to the point that one can often go for several days without the need to don a mask. As a result, being confronted with six or seven hours of mandatory ‘emaskulation’ in airports and on airplanes, is suddenly tougher than when the whole nasty business first blindsided us. Back then, we were “all in it together” but now, things seem less coherent as we all come out of it together.

If one pays attention, there is of course humor to be found in just about everything, especially in air travel. One example I have always loved, is onboard PA’s that get mangled in the making. Among my favorites were, “Our planned altitude today will be 35,000 square feet” (on AC) and, “Please remain seated with your seat belts securely fastened until the terminal building has come to a complete stop” (on the late, little-lamented Eastern Air Lines – and yes, it was styled as ‘Air Lines’).

Anyway, last week on JetBlue I was treated to a PA to rival those classics, when the lead flight attendant, who had just made a trip down the aisle remonstrating with passengers for failing to replace their masks after eating, took to the mic to frustratedly announce that passengers must keep their masks in place “even while eating and drinking.” The laughter this evoked seemed totally lost on her, while the person sitting next to me commented, “Wow, this is going to get very messy.”

“Both afraid to say we’re just too far away, from being close together from the start”

All the best onboard. mask wearing in the world however goes for naught in that instant when the terminal building has come to a complete stop and the fasten seat belt sign dings off. Even in normal times, the ensuing mad scramble to leap up and fight with surrounding passengers to be the first to extricate their wheeled steamer trunks from the overhead bin, is a sorry comment on the human condition. In present times however, while we are still being urged to observe social distancing, this futile, elbow-to-elbow battle, seems even more inane than before.

As mask mandates slowly become a thing of the past for the world’s airlines, it will be interesting to observe just how many travelers will voluntarily continue to wear them. While maybe less likely in the HEPA-filtered cabins of airplanes, some modes of transport will almost certainly see a profusion of ongoing ‘maskerading’.

I recently rode the New York City subway and, when a stranger violently sneezed into his mask several times, I found myself thinking, “Yep, with or without mandates, this is going to be a masked event from this day forth.” I was reminded of my first trip on the Tokyo underground some 30 years ago, when I was surprised to see almost everyone wearing masks. When I asked a Japanese colleague what was going on, he simply shrugged, “It’s flu season” which seemed to make total sense.

So, it has all been for a worthy cause but, in our everyday lives, let’s hope the question, “Who was that masked man?” is soon only to be heard in reruns of ‘The Lone Ranger’- and with that, “Hi Yo Silver, Away.”