If you only know me from the blog you might envision me as a politer version of Gladys Kravitz, routinely sticking my nose in other people’s business. There was that time I asked the kid at the ballet recital to stop playing video games, and the time I told the fraternity guy that I was not having any of his nonsense, and the time I made noises about poisoning an unrepentant neighbor's biting dog. Earlier in the pandemic I might have made it sound like I was being bossy about masks on a regular basis. The reality is that pretty much any time I ask other people to modify their behavior I wind up blogging about it, because it stresses me out. It’s rarer for me to blog about live-and-let-live moments, even though I think I am mostly a live-and-let-live kind of person.
I think the guiding question for me about poking my nose in is this: does this person's decision make things worse for multiple people, or just me? And I'm a little more likely to poke my nose in with college students, because I am surrounded by them and it is frequently clear that they are still figuring out the nuances of adult life and neighborliness. My single biggest bossy-neighbor episode involved the college student in a nearby apartment building who wanted to let his scary dog run loose on the route between our block and the elementary school. Which-- no. Absolutely not.
In Target last night it did not seem right to me that someone would park herself at the store entrance, laughing loud and long and open-mouthed in the direction of the front doors. There was no way into the store except through her invisible cloud of exhalations. Two weeks ago Gladlyville briefly occupied the #1 spot on one of the NYT lists of hot spots; the percentage of college students in town who have tested positive for COVID in the past month is approaching double digits. Two weeks ago most of our new cases were in college-aged people, but we are seeing that change at the same time that we are seeing record hospitalizations, along with more deaths after a long lull.
This combination of circumstances makes me think that it's a bad time for college students to be acting cavalier about COVID precautions. That's why I made the request last night.
I'm reading this post over and it sounds defensive, which is maybe a little weird since no one here has questioned my choice to ask her to put a mask on. Usually when people say "we live in a society!" they say it huffily, to condemn behavior that seems clearly outside the norm. But I think we can also say "we live in a society!" kindly: my choices affect you, and vice versa. I can ask you to do things differently if your choices make me worried about other people's well-being. You can decline, because we live in a free society, but I find that people are usually willing to consider a reasonable request, framed politely.
I have been an inconsiderate young adult; I have spewed out loud performative laughter and failed to follow posted rules. It was in large part the patient requests of people around me that taught me how to be a more considerate 20-something. And so I think sometimes it's better to ask gently for the thing that seems right to me, instead of being frustrated that the other person isn't offering it unasked.
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