The Indifferent
On the flight from Chicago to Grand Rapids, I sat next to a jovial woman.
I mentioned this, but I always mask up at airports. It's not just COVID, it's everything. COVID just made me aware of it for the first time.
The lady sits down and we go through the usual pleasantries. Then she says she's impressed by my discipline wearing a mask, and that she used to do it, but she just got "worn out." Then she says she was at a family wedding with thirty people all weekend, and brightly said, "So I figure if I'm going to get it, I've already got it!"
She thought this was funny.
It reminded me how indifferent we (Americans) can be to everyone else. It never even crossed her mind to wear a mask to protect other people. She was 100% thinking about herself.
This made me wonder if we've always been like this, or if it's a more recent trend. I don't know if she was a conservative/liberal or something in-between, as she had no obvious tells, but her level of self-absorption was stunning.
I can answer part of this question, because Americans are famous for being self-absorbed in comparison to other countries. It's just that now it seems even worse.
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