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Oh what the heck. There were a number of measures, all minor in their own right but, collectively, effective in stopping me from going all Rambo.

I walked into the airports without a mask and lied my butt off about having an airline-approved exemption. That failed miserably in Toronto, where they immediately asked for the paperwork, but it was mostly successful in America.

When that stopped working at the security belt in America, which was much further than I thought I’d get, I donned an oversize and practically see-through mask until after security when I removed it again. I got caught 20 minutes later. I moved to another area and removed the mask and pretended to talk on my cell phone for 20 minutes. When I got bored with that, I went to a corner with my back to the other passengers and just stood there maskless breathing clean air.

Toronto airport was a ghost town with only foreign airlines flying out, so I parked myself, maskless, on an airline blanket in one of the family bathrooms in the airport until just before flight time. Nobody even knocked on the door.

During the flights, I ate and drank as often and as slowly as possible. When I wasn’t eating, I was making chewing motions with my mouth so it looked like I was eating something.

When I had to put the mask on (takeoff and landing), I had cut slits into the mask folds, as some particularly bright poster here suggested, and they allowed my exhale to escape so I didn’t have to breathe in my own hot CO2. Because it was oversized for my face, there were large gaps on the sides and at the bottom anyway.

And when nothing else was possible, I let the mask slip under my nose often and pretended not to notice. Both hands were always full so it looked like it wasn’t possible for me to re-arrange a mask and you all know how dangerous it is to everyone for one person to stop suddenly in a busy airport walkway. Only one passenger said anything on the whole trip, and I replied “Oh my!”, thanked her for pointing it out and said “Whew! It’s so great that your mask works so well.”

I mean, for crying out loud, I had to take tests that proved I was covid-negative before they’d even let me on the planes (thanks, Canada), so I wasn’t putting other people at risk. I took one two days before leaving Texas and took another one administered by the Canadian Red Cross from inside my taxi at the border crossing, and have to take yet another in 9 days. Plus I’d been doing the whole ivermectin routine for weeks, and was in the sun about 6 hours a day, which is suspected to be a coronavirus killer. I was probably the safest person on all 4 planes, in spite of my non-compliance.

That’s most of what I remember. To be clear, I would not have done any of that if I even WONDERED if I might be dangerous to another passenger. I’m not mean. But the protocols are not really designed to protect us from anyone but the spit-talkers. Simulations show exhale escaping from the sides of masks backwards. Our eyes are largely unprotected. Doorknobs and toilet handles and seats don’t get wiped after our entry or exit, the handles on the overhead bins aren’t wiped, we’re told to stand 6 feet apart in line but told to sit 12 inches from the head of our seat mates. Then there’s that whole herd immunity protection that we’re just delaying.

That’s how I coped. Maybe by the next time I take a flight, I won’t have to be so non-compliant.