The Real Reason Young People Still Wearing Masks

The young clerk at the grocery store yesterday was wearing a blue surgical mask over her nose and mouth. All I could see were her eyes and her eyebrows. She was friendly and professional; one of the only people in the Harris Teeter on Augusta Road in Greenville with a mask on.

I shouldered my backpack full of food. When I turned around to say thank you, I saw that she kept her mask on, even though there was no other customer at her register and no one within 20 feet of her.

Later that day I met with a middle-school principal at a charter school.

“At the end of last year a lot of our kids wouldn’t take their masks off,” he admitted. “Even after the state lifted all mask requirements.”

I could tell from the look on his face that he was troubled by his students’ behavior.

“Are you anti-mask?” I asked.

“Oh no! I’m absolutely in favor of masking for health reasons,” he said. “We follow the state guidelines. But when my kids kept doing it even after it was no longer required, I started to wonder why.”

So this principal did a survey of all of the children to find out why so many of them were still wearing masks.

“The answer surprised me,” he said. “It also made me sad.”