I have spent the better part of today trying to come up with a comfortable, secure, easy-on/easy-off/easy-on-again face mask that is: 1.) quick to construct, 2.) requires no, or minimal elastic, and 3.) supports a maximum load of significantly less than 100 pounds.
I had what I consider to be a brilliant design. Comfortable: check. Stays put: check. Easy to wear: check. Quick to make: check. Does not require elastic: check. BUT it fails the final criterion, and that’s a deal killer.
These masks I’m trying to figure out are going to a residential school where 25 of their students are sheltering in the only place they are allowed to be. Some of them can’t go “home” because “home” is where they got so messed up that there isn’t any other school that will take them. Some of them can’t shelter in place at home because their family has no home.
Despite the best efforts of the staff of this school, these kids are under-class citizens: under-served, under-nourished, under-educated, under surveillance, 24/7. For their personal protection during this lockdown — and hey, lockdown is nothing new to these kids — they’ve each been issued one cloth face mask, one size fits … most of them very poorly.
I was kind of excited when I learned that they really needed different masks. To think I could make a small but meaningful contribution! I got right on it and, BOOM! Here’s a great, doable, design. Except: It fastens with a slip knot at the end of a 30” cord. One of these kids has already tried to hang themselves with a scarf. So nothing I make that fastens around anybody’s head can be hefty enough to hold 100 pounds.
(There’s a 3-line poem somewhere in all of that.)
