There is a “free” box in front of my house with six cartons of KN95 masks in it. Each little carton contains several shrink-wrapped packets of nice black masks with ear loops. I’m not planning to stop wearing a mask; that’s not why I’m giving them away.

The KN95 masks aren’t as effective in filtering out viruses as the better-fitting N95 masks I just bought, but that’s not why I’m getting rid of them.

I’m giving them away because I just got new hearing aids, and the reason I lost my previous two was that, when getting off the bus and taking off my mask, the ear loop of the KN95 caught the aid and flung it to the ground, where it became completely invisible, no matter how long I searched. Those things cost thousands of dollars, and my insurance only covered one replacement.

I could just stop wearing a mask, like most people, but I continue to mask indoors for two reasons:

First, I’m old, and I have asthma. I can’t afford to get the flu, let alone COVID. Even though I’m vaccinated against both, the protection is only partial and wanes over time.

Second, the world is profoundly stupid, and people won’t stay home when they’re sick, or wear masks correctly.

When my husband was dying, an acquaintance decided to come visit him while he lay in his hospital bed, looking emaciated and as if he was halfway into the afterlife. She informed me in passing that she was still testing positive, but it was okay because she didn’t have any symptoms any more. He shook with fear when I told him that, and I went outside and told her he was asleep.

She wasn’t the only one I knew who went back into general society while still testing positive. And then people just stopped testing, because if you don’t test you don’t know if you’re still infectious. It’s magic. So there they are, on airplanes and in enclosed spaces, Typhoid Marys, sending the love into the air because they are free to do what they want and nobody knows they’re infectious, including them.

I actually have it pretty good, because nobody actually gives me a hard time here for masking; Philadelphia is a mask-friendly town. My dentist, when I informed her I am at risk and wear a mask, put little pink Post-Its all over my cubicle that read perkily, “Mask up!” Quite a few people wear masks on the bus, usually women my age, but sometimes older men, too.

Of course the masked passengers usually wear the masks under their noses, or even under their chins, as if the masks were totems rather than electrostatic filters, or they wear the old fabric masks, the ones we were told to wear when there was a shortage of the ones that actually worked.

Yet even the people who wear masks correctly insist on taking them off to speak. It’s so very human to watch my acquaintance with MS raise her hand in a meeting and, when she is called upon, carefully lift off the retaining straps and pull the mask off. It’s much more effort than just leaving the damn thing on, though she’s chronically exhausted and physically vulnerable. But human beings, though they can understand talking on a microphone in their earbuds to someone who isn’t there, can’t seem to wrap their brains around the idea of talking through a mask.

You know I can hear you when you talk through a mask, right? even though I’m actually a little deaf? And that flu and colds may be spread by droplets, but COVID is spread by aerosol and hangs in the air for a long time, like cigarette smoke? You know that viruses can come out of your nose, too? You know that COVID is still killing people like me? No, I guess you don’t.

I’m not mad. They can’t help it.

When I ordered my new hearing aids, I bought a nice new carton of N95 masks, the ones with the loops that go around the back of my head and the back of my neck, instead of hooking over the ears, so that my hearing aids won’t go flying when unmask.

I can’t wear a mask at the dentist, though, because they’re right up in my open mouth, drilling away.

So when the dentist took her mask down to explain to me what she was doing, despite having put all those little Pink Post-Its all around the cubicle herself, a wave of tiredness washed over me.

Someone already took two of the cartons of masks out of the “free” box while I was writing this, though, so there’s hope.