Growing up as a kid in the 80s and watching more than my share of cartoons, I was accustomed to thinking that masks, particularly those covering the lower part of the face, were a common and awesome accessory for many uniforms and costumes.
There was even a cartoon called MASK, which, as the name implies, very mask-intensive. I remember thinking it was super cool as a kid. It appears that few agreed with me, since it only lasted like a season. I think it was pretty stupid even for the standards of the time.
But in the realm of lower face masks, come to think of it, they seemed to mostly be applied to bad guys. I liked GI Joe a lot and particularly liked the uniform of the Cobra soldier.
There are man instances when I look back and my younger self and severely question my past judgement, and this is a really, really good example of that. First of all, I don’t suppose it’s every good to be looking up to villains, and second of all, Cobra soldiers are by no means cool. There are no shortage of cool bad guys out there, but these are basically the villain equivalent of Star Trek red shirts.
Secondly, whoa, those uniforms. From the German style helmets that has been worn from every bad guy from Darth Vader to Shredder, and can we talk about the suspenders? Yeah, let’s not. Clearly my taste in villainous fashion left much to be desired.
NOTE: One or two people reading this may have seen Physics Man, the movie I made back in high school. It is safely in the vault, but I will admit here that I played the villain and yes, did include suspenders in my costume. So clearly those Cobra soldiers had a much bigger impact on my bad guy fashion sense than I had previously realized. I guess there is something villainous about suspenders.
This is a lot of backstory to get to the point that now my childhood dream of being able to wear cool masks has come to a terrible, Monkey’s Paw kind of result. It’s lesson as old as time. Be careful what you wish for when you’re 9 years old, because it might result in a crippling global pandemic 37 years later. Sorry everybody.
I took the kids and Asta for a walk around the neighborhood and Amelia and Henry were rocking their masks for the first time. I think we looked way cooler than Cobra soldiers. And no suspenders.
Henry was not any fan of wearing it. Not like any of us are, of course. I guess when you’re four years old, your id is still powerful enough to just do what we’d all like to do with a face mask: rip it off his face. But it was a nice walk and got us out in the world a little, anyway.
I know masks will be part of our lives for a while, so I’m sure we’ll get used to it on some level. I just hope we don’t reach a point where we have to go full on Cobra Commander.
That looks pretty constricting. And I already have issues with my face masks steaming up my glasses. I can’t imagine how bad that must be.
