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I Can See Your F*cking Smiles Again and I Love It

Masks are coming off and I’m with it — terrified, but with it.

Evan Wildstein
2 min readMay 27, 2021
Phot: Eye for Ebony, Unsplash

Hey there. I’m Evan — self-described germophobe and hypochondriac. Back in late-February 2020, one of my colleagues famously (infamously?) said to me:

“I’m morbidly curious how you would react if this ‘covid thing’ became a big deal.”

Well, the joke’s on you, Susan. It was a big deal, and it’s been f*cking terrible. I still give her grief about it on every single Zoom meeting.

But today — walking around the university campus where I work — I came to a fabulous realization. People were smiling at me as I walked by, and I was smiling back. (To be clear, this is a highly vaccinated campus, myself included, and there are fewer places in the world where I feel as safe.)

Over the past 14 months, I have no idea what people were doing under their masks in my direction. Mouthing silent expletives? Rapping through the incorrect lyrics of Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week?” A smile?

No idea!

Irrespective of what was happening, the smiles are here now, and we should all be glad. For one, people are getting jabbed with anti-COVID science juice, allowing the world to…

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Evan Wildstein
Evan Wildstein

Written by Evan Wildstein

Words on work, organizational culture, and humor. More at https://evanwildstein.com.

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