It's nice to know I was wrong about something.
It was a glorious day in Marquette yesterday...sunny and 80, a nice little sneak peak at what (we hope) the next three months hold. Needless to say, I was in and out of work quite a bit, and it was when I was outside of the station eating lunch that I noticed I was thankfully wrong about something.
Our smiles haven't disappeared.
Last year in the middle of the pandemic, when everyone was just starting to mask up, I wondered what would happen to all the smiles you get when you walk past someone. It's one of the great things about Marquette, home to some of the friendliest people on the planet. When you walk past someone, you get a smile and a “good morning” or some other kind of greeting. When we all had to mask up we lost that, and last year around this time I wondered if we would ever get it back.
I can report, thankfully, that we did.
Like I said, I was eating lunch outside and had a dozen or so people walking by. All of them smiled at me; several people, some I knew and some I didn't know, stopped for a second to chat. The one thing they all had in common, at least those who weren't masked?
A big smile.
Talking to one of the people I did know, she said she's been having the same problem I have—that it feels strange not to be wearing a mask. But we both got vaccinated (among other reasons) so we could shed them, and while it is a strange feeling it's a great feeling, like we've finally turned some sort of mythical corner in the fight against 2020. I don't know if that accounted for the smiles I saw, I don't know if the warm weather accounted for them. Heck--for all I know we've been smiling at other people this whole time and just couldn't see them because we were protecting the health of our fellow humans.
No matter what the reason, it's just nice to know the smiles are back. And after 14 months of not really seeing them, it's a comforting feeling that one of the things for which Marquette is known didn't disappear after all.
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