SCENE: Two days ago. My neighborhood grocery store. It’s small, old-fashioned. The narrow aisles barely allow Dude to push his cart past mine, never mind six feet of distancing.

Dude is my age. Dude is White. Dude is wearing a neck gaiter. It is currently uselessly gaitering his neck.

We make eye contact. I give him big worried brown puppy-eyes and pat my mask twice as a gentle reminder.

He stares back for a moment. Then makes his mouth into an O and pats it twice, shrugging in clearly feigned incomprehension before pushing on down the aisle.

And I know: What he did wasn’t simply mocking me. He made a snap decision to take my gesture and twist it into an instantly recognizable racist stereotype. I know it because I’m 48 and when I was little, we played Cowboys and Indians on the playground; if you were a Cowboy you made a fingergun and went pow-pow-pow, but if you were an Indian you patted the O of your mouth just like that and went woo-woo-woo. He’d deny it of course, but he knows it and I know it.

Such a small moment. And yet I’m still steaming, because it’s all right there.

When did the anti-mask protests really ramp up? When it became clear that Black and Indigenous people and people of color were being disproportionately sickened and killed by Covid-19.

When did those protests escalate to bringing weapons of war into a state’s seat of government, and plotting to kidnap and execute the governor? When it was a woman in charge of that state.

Hello there, anti-masking intersecting with racism intersecting with misogyny.

Hello there, Dude.

No matter what happens in this election, Dude will still be here in the crowded aisles of my local grocery store.

I don’t know what else I coulda shoulda done in that moment. Didn’t report him to the store personnel because that puts them at even greater risk. I’d welcome advice on how to handle the little bullsh*t like this in future.

As to the bigger bullsh*t: excuse me, I’ve got to go make some calls to swing states.