The rule-following anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers of 2021


I've never been much of a rule-follower. Even back in high school, I really had no clue what the rules were, like how many classes you could be late for before detention, or how many classes you could skip before you were expelled. I just showed up for class, did what I needed to do to pass, and moved on. I've always been lazy, and memorizing a bunch of rules has always been way too much work for me. Some people are very good at it, rattling them off the way I remember my friends who could do baseball statistics. And I would listen to these people until I could find an excuse to go wander off. I'm glad for people like that, but it's not me, I just can't seem to follow it.

Of course, the rule-following people knew exactly how close they could cut things, and to them it made life more interesting. Most of the rule-following people wanted to break the rules, as they saw rules as oppressive, and in order to show defiance for the rules, they had to know them. I've always been too lazy to memorize more than I absolutely had to, and instead I just did what I call "conceptual thinking". I really have no idea how many red lights you can run in Phoenix, Arizona before you get a ticket, I just know that if you do there's a good chance you'll get smushed. And every once in a while I ponder exactly how many liquor stores you need to rob in Phoenix to get the police involved, and although I don't know the exact rule, I don't see any reason to know.

I've lived a good long life, mostly in Arizona and California, and have had to learn more rules than I'd like to. There was a color code for parking along a curb in California, and I really never learned it. Red means no parking, green means something else, yellow something else, and so I just avoided parking along curbs. I looked for a parking spot, which sometimes wasn't easy to do. I knew people who just loved to sit around discussing these sorts of things, and I would hang out with them if they were buying the beer, but otherwise I'd wander off.

It's April 16th, and in two days I'll be getting my second COVID shot. After a couple of weeks for my body to build up, my chances of catching this nasty disease drop. No, it will never get to zero, that's not how all of this works. I have a conceptual understanding of viruses based on having caught the flu many times in a long life, and all I can say is that I don't want any flu, ever again, if I can avoid it. And I try not to talk to the rule-followers, as they want to know if it's required by the county, the state, the feds. Or maybe it's a city thing, like wearing a mask in public? I smile and nod at these people, and wander off.

Rule-followers just think differently from me. In school, they tended to be math wizards, and could calculate stuff quickly in their heads. They understood if grades were "weighted" - something I still don't have a clue about (and please don't start explaining to me!). Nowadays these people can tell me what the rules are for wearing masks based on particular locations, like county lines, or city boundaries. And they always seem to be under the impression that I know the rules, but I'm just wearing a mask and getting a vaccine, and I appreciate the compliment to my intelligence.

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