Masks help create an identity crisis for us

For a few fleeting moments as he sat in a Panera, Todd Hagopian wondered if he’d made a grave mistake.

Hagopian, 40 and a business owner in Bixby, Okla., had just left home on a Wednesday morning in January when a colleague called him about a situation at the office. Rather than waiting to deal with it once he arrived, he pulled his car into the nearest Panera parking lot and grabbed a table inside. As he spoke on the phone in what he described as a loud, “not so happy” voice, a woman peered at him from around the corner.

“I gave her a look like, ‘What are you looking at? I’m in the middle of a work call.’ Then I just gave her a nod,” Hagopian said, “like you’d give to any stranger who you made eye contact with.” The woman walked away to pick up her food, then glanced over again.

As soon as he hung up, the same woman approached Hagopian’s table. She removed her mask and Hagopian found himself face-to-face with Andrea, his wife of 10 years and the mother of his four sons.

She had just said goodbye to him at home an hour earlier. “Did you just nod at me?” she asked him.

In his defense, his wife was not someone Hagopian expected to bump into on this particular morning at this particular Panera. “I’m usually at work by then, and I didn’t know that that was part of her morning routine,” Hagopian said.

He followed his wife out to her car to make sure she wasn’t upset. Much to his relief, she wasn’t; by the time they got in their separate cars, the two were laughing about it. But just to be sure, Hagopian later sent his wife a bouquet.

Ever since we were told to wear masks 11 months ago, our social life has been adjusting. When dining out, we’ve learned when to put them on (when the server approaches) and when they can come off (during the eating portion, assuming we want to actually ingest our meals).We’ve learned to nudge, elbow or kick our partners when we want to discreetly grab their attention, rather than silently mouthing words.

But some of us are still having trouble placing a familiar face, winding up in the surreal, often embarrassing predicaments of having failed to recognize colleagues, friends, neighbors and even members of our own family. In the age of social distancing, it certainly hasn’t made anyone feel less alienated from other people.