By Harry Loney
Booo to you, coronavirus! Yeah that’s right, you heard me, you smelly pointy ball of poop. If I may be so bold as to paraphrase a previous UK Government Secretary of Defence, “Why don’t you just go away, and shut up?”. If that terrifying instruction didn’t work for the Russians, perhaps it will work for a virus. But in the meantime, we all have to wear facemasks. They have their pros and cons, of course. Let me detail a few for you.
Pros of wearing a facemasks
- People can’t tell if you’ve brushed your teeth.
I mean this one is a winner all by itself. 9 out of 10 dentists hate it.
Forgotten to brush your teeth? Who cares?! Nobody’s getting close enough to breathe your breath anyway, and with a mask on, nobody can see the slow, painful decline of your oral health. A win!
- You get to pretend you’re a bandit
Self-explanatory. In shops, use your fingers as pretend guns when pointing at things and shoot them in your head. Furthermore, when in areas you are not known, speak in a terrible American accent to further add to your “fun”.
Finally, when you have all your shopping in your bag, be sure to leg it out of the shop yelling “you ain’t gonna catch me again, Sheriff!” and make peow-peow noises with fingers raised.
- You don’t have to laugh at small talk anymore
Look, everybody hates small talk. We all have to do it, and it has its place, but let’s all agree it’s just dull. I don’t care what the traffic was like getting in, Greg. I want to cut straight to the part where you think your wife is cheating on you because you can’t get erections anymore. Give me the juicy stuff.
But until then, we all have to deal with small talk. Fortunately, masks have meant we no longer have to smile when someone says something that is forced-funny. We can just remain there, po-faced, staring into the soul of the other person and watch it shrivel up like their unused ballsack.
- Mouthbreathers: unite!
Mouthbreathers get a pretty bad rep these days. To call someone a mouthbreather is to insinuate they are rather stupid, probably unwashed and definately not someone you would care to stand next to for long.
However when you become a literal mouthbreather, perhaps due to a cold or bunged up nose, you are lumped in with this lot. But not any more! Breath out your mouth all day long if you want to now, as you are behind a mask! Huzzah!
- You don’t have to cover your mouth when you cough!
Nobody has to cover their mouth when coughing in a facemask! Or wait. Do you? Is covering your mouth when you cough still expected? What’s the point, there can’t be anything coming out from the other end of the facemask. So can I just go about coughing with my hands flapping by my side? That’s a lot of years of muscle memory to ignore. Is it still polite to cover my mouth? Or will doing so make me look like an idiot? That’s the last thing I want. We need guidance on this. Why has the government not offered guidance on this? Down with the government, I say.
- Wearing a mask helps you stop the spread of coronavirus
Wearing facemasks means that you don’t catch coronavirus and perhaps die. And that your friends and family don’t catch it and then die. So this is a pretty big pro for facemasks. It should probably be at number 1, but that involves copy and pasting, and nobody’s got time for that at the moment.
Cons of a facemask
- You can no longer mouth swearwords on a bus
One of the country’s most popular pastimes is mouthing swearwords to passers-by when on public transport. Isn’t it? Or is it just me? You know, when your bus is about to move off from the bus stop, and there are still people there. And they are staring vacantly ahead – just in line with your mischievous head.
So what’s a guy to do? You quite simply have to mouth “F**k you” as you go past, and enjoy those brief seconds of confusion on the other person’s face. You will then have a few seconds of anxiety yourself as you fear that the bus might stop and let that person on though. Then you have some explaining to do, but it all adds to the thrill of a boring bus ride. But you can’t do this with a mask on.
Wait, is it just me that’s doing this? That’s a revelation…
- Er…
I mean, that’s about it. They’re just facemasks… Stay safe, everyone.