A Guilty Mind

From my perch on the couch yesterday, I saw the fast walking resident who’d recently recovered from being hospitalized with Covid. She was on the side walkway heading towards the Laundry Room, laundry basket in hand, and she was not wearing a mask.

Note to self: Take disinfectant spray when next you enter the Laundry Room.

I’m assuming she set her laundry to wash and was done for the moment, because I again observed her on the walkway, this time heading back towards her unit.

I did not see her return to remove wash and set laundry to dry but, when I later went out to drop trash in the bin, then loop around to check mail, there her maskless self was.

She was sitting on the bench outside the Laundry Room and, when she saw me coming down the walkway, having to pass her maskless self to get to my unit, she greeted me by saying, “Hi. I forgot my mask”.

A guilty mind.

She knew she was wrong to be trapsing around here maskless — when we are once again under the governor’s mask mandate, and came up with an excuse to ward off my saying anything.

It was an obvious lie that she’d forgotten her mask. Obvious to me because I’d see her twice on the walkway, once when she was headed back to her unit and could easily have retrieved her mask before heading back to sit on the bench.

Reminded me of a story a coworker once told me about his childhood growing up in the country.

He said he’d been a mischievous child and, with not much to do in the county, he and another neighbor boy had stolen a chicken.

I don’t recall if he said what the boys did with the chicken but, shortly after stealing, it there was a knock on the door.

He said he opened the door, saw it was an officer of the law and immediately blurted out, “I didn’t steal no chicken!”.

His guilty mind made his mouth utter that lie, before the officer even asked. To top it off, the officer was there on another matter. Knew nothing about a chicken having been stolen.

At any rate, after this fast walking maskless neighbor lied to me about forgetting her mask, she complimented my mask and wished me a blessed day — which is her usual greeting to all us neighbors … “Have a blessed day”.

Deliver me from these overly religious types.

Waking up to the below Breaking News is giving me pause.

I’m not looking forward to a booster but, fortunately, I was late to the party, can observe how things go with the boosters, won’t have to make a decision until January.

How are you feeling about a booster ... Is it yeah or nay or whatever — it is what it is?