Signs of Hope as Bay State Public Scolding Returns to Salem Witch Levels

WESTLAND, Mass.  Centennial Park here is a favorite spot for dog lovers and their dogs, and never more so than the present as its wide open spaces attract canines and humans at their wits’ end after a month of house arrest during the coronavirus crisis.  “It’s wonderful how happy the dogs are when they see each other,” Tillie Dejima, a retired bookkeeper, said yesterday as she watched her 6-year-old cockerschnauzcolliepoo cavort with a motley crew of other four-footed friends he knows from daily walks here.

“Oh no–the humans are at it again.”

But trouble appeared on the horizon in the form of Ethel Bronstadt, a thirty-something aerobics instructor currently furloughed from her job at a health club and feeling the effects of lack of exercise, who shot a scowl at Dejima and her frisky pet.  “WHY DOESN’T YOUR DOG HAVE A SURGICAL MASK ON?” Bronstadt screamed, and others turned their heads to register their disapproval in the time-honored New England tradition known as “the hairy eyeball.”  “I’m . . . sorry,” Dejima said as she fumbled in her pocket for a bandana, which she clumsily affixed to her dog’s head.

“Shame–SHAME!” other dog walkers began to chant, forcing Dejima to retreat to her Subaru hatchback and beat a hasty retreat to her assisted living unit two towns over, where she sat depressed in a windowless room until she could safely emerge to walk her dog after sundown.

“Keep your damn distance!”

The uncomfortable encounter was entered into the local police blotter, where sociologist Myron Naushon noted it with approval when he made his rounds this morning to see how Massachusetts residents are holding up under the strain of social isolation.  “This is very encouraging,” he says as he logged the data into his laptop.  “With any luck, we could see a return of public executions based on imaginary evidence, like back in the Salem witch trial days.”

It started out as a internet meme designed to mock paranoid germ-o-phobes who criticize strangers for not complying with recommendations of public health officials–“I saw Goody Proctor buying non-essential items at Target”–but the stern descendants of Cotton Mather have turned that light-hearted kidding into a rallying cry that recalls the halcyon days when women were hanged and men crushed with rocks on nothing more than mere suspicion.

“I forget–are we supposed to bring re-usable bags to the grocery store or not?” asks a clearly confused Margaret Oswold, a retired teacher, outside Mother Earth Natural Foods, where she has been a loyal supporter of the company’s waste reduction and recycling policies for many years.  “You’re not supposed to bring that germ-soaked piece of crap out in public where it could kill my children!” snarls Alison Janney-Armistaad out the driver-side window of her Range Rover, which she swerves away from the senior citizen in the parking lot in an effort to maximize the “social distance” between the two.

“That’s her!  She brought a metal mug into Dunkin’ Donuts!”

Mass hysteria is usually a sign of the final stage of a pandemic, causing hospital officials to view the outbreak of public scolding as a positive, despite the tension and violence it may produce between total strangers.  “It’s got people talking to each other, albeit from a distance and using bullhorns in some cases,” says St. Swithin’s Health Center COO Myron Packard.  “If we can spare just one life from the coronavirus by burning a social outcast at the stake, it will have been worth it.”