In the fall of 2021, after a remote year, I was teaching in person wearing a mask close to 100% of the time. A few weeks into one intro course, where the students didn’t already know me, I lowered my mask for a moment and there were audible gasps from the class. They’d never seen the lower half of my face!

“What did you •think• was going to be down there?!” I quipped. (Maybe they were picturing tentacles, like an Ood?)

But the gasp was genuine: after hours of looking at my masked face, they still had no idea what my •unmasked• face looks like.

1/