My son asked me to teach him how to play chess. I was tremendously excited, but I quickly realized that I had a few problems. First, I did not have a chess board. Second, it was May 2020, and lockdown was in full force.
The easy thing to do of course would be to order a chess set on Amazon, and wait a couple of days until they delivered to my door despite the plague outside. It’s essential business after all – delivering chess sets. The harder, but vastly more interesting thing, would be to test Walmart’s masking policy.
While I have no aversion to breaking the rules when they are stupid, in an ironic twist I would be following them very closely. Walmart’s masking policy allowed “Medical Exemptions” and did not require any documentation to prove the exemption. I would take advantage of this loophole.
I loaded my son into the car and headed off to the Walmart. We parked and walked up to the entrance. They had one entrance entirely blocked off. The other had entry and exit sides delineated. There were two employees at the entry acting as guards and enforcing the mask policy. This is where at least the first confrontation would be.
The man at the entry was the first to approach. He was wearing jeans that looked like they needed to be washed and his blue shirt and smock. He had a mask, and a filthy looking beard poking out three of the four sides. He was the picture perfect icon of COVID sanitation procedures. He immediately informed us that we would need a mask to enter.
I said, “No problem sir, I have a medical exemption.”
He came up very close to me, pulled his mask down, and with malodorous breath said, “Medical Exemption? Or Medical Condition?” trying to spring a trap.
The Walmart policy very clearly stipulated that only medical “exemptions” were to be allowed through. If I tried to argue with him that I had a medical condition I would be barred from entering the store. So, I happily responded, “Medical Exemption.”
Thwarted, he moved on to what could be an easier target, my son. “Well, what about him?” he asked.
“Oh, him, he has a medical exemption too.”
Thwarted again, his powers disappeared and we could pass through the gate in the next stage of our quest. He did leave us one last parting gift though where he pulled out his radio, and asked to broadcast on the store’s PA system that there were two medical exemptions entering.
As we walked in, my son was enthralled by the conflict, and my success against it. He was smiling ear to ear as we walked in, but he also questioned my morality. “Dad, you lied to him?” he asked with the excitement that comes from doing something risky and getting away with it.
I explained that I did not. The policy had no definition, and therefore we could make one up. That sometimes if you wanted to break the rules, you had to follow them very strictly.
The walk to the chess set was quite stunning for me. We were the only two humans in the store without a mask. We passed a queue of masked people in a socially-distanced spaced out line at the pharmacy. It will forever remain an image in my head of sadness. One of hunched shoulders, silence, and downcast eyes. Waiting… I suppose not for death, but certainly not for life.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. We found the chess set, we purchased it, the cashier did not say anything, and we left. I checked the local news the next few days as a joke and did not see any “COVID Massacre Strikes Local Walmart” headlines. I assume everyone is OK, the same as they were every other day of their lives beforehand.
I still think about this trip often. The look of excitement on my son’s face when he realized he could do what he wanted contrasted against the downtrodden faces and slumped shoulders of the asinine rule followers; The filthy man valorously guarding the door from sanitary threats; The irony of purchasing a game of strategy and forward thinking by exposing ourselves to the severely high risk of death from the plague.
There is a great quote usually attributed to Pablo Picasso: “Know the rules so well you can be an artist when breaking them.” It’s an important sentiment though, and it was the chief lesson for my son. If you stand beyond reproach, and you can fall back on their own rules when pressed, you can largely make your own way in life despite what everyone else is doing.