Yahoo Sport 
Pro-lockdown obsessives still long to be told what to do
At some point during the Covid pandemic – the bit between lockdowns, when everything was open but we were still wearing masks and edging gingerly around each other – I went into a gift shop, looking for a present for my niece. I had my sister on the phone, and was consulting her about the trinkets on the shelves, when a small, grey-haired woman started hissing at me from across the room.
“Excuse me!” she whisper-shouted, in a tone of trembling outrage. “Don’t you know there’s a pandemic?”
“But I’m wearing a mask,” I replied, blushing with confusion. I took an automatic step towards her and she flattened herself against the wall.
“You keep TALKING!” she hissed. “Tiny particulates can get through the mask!”
It was an unsettling encounter, and not just because I felt unfairly reproached. My accuser looked so normal, in her glasses and raincoat and neat bob. She clearly felt herself to be a good, responsible person, trying to enforce Covid-safe behaviour. And yet, she was obviously losing her mind.
This is the constituency that is most easily forgotten when we tot up the casualties of the pandemic. The ones who went quietly, respectably mad. Not the conspiracy theorists, with their lurid fairytales and flamboyant nihilism. But the people who were inclined – too inclined – to be public-spirited and obedient.
A new study by psychologists at Bangor University has found that the people who stuck most closely to lockdown rules have suffered the worst impact to their mental health. “Communal” personality types – those with a strong sense of duty towards others – were most anxious about getting or spreading the infection, and therefore adhered rigidly to the protocols. This in itself must have had an impact on their mental health: the more scrupulous the self-isolation, the worse the loneliness.
The most law-abiding people have also found it hardest to transition back to “normality”. They miss being told what to do. Lacking regular announcements on how to live now, many are still following infection prevention measures. They are locked into a state of perpetual emergency.
Some, it should be admitted, were a bit unravelled already. The hissing woman in the shop was probably always the type to patrol other people’s behaviour, with relish. Being public-spirited does not automatically make you personable – or sane.
Talking to strangers
American universities are distributing handbooks of basic “small talk”, for a generation of students incapable of making face-to-face conversation. After introducing yourself to a stranger, for example, you should: “Stop! Let them tell you their name.” This is not the kind of knowledge a university should have to impart. Lockdowns and smartphones have been blamed, but what about the parents? Teaching your offspring good manners – by which I don’t mean fussy etiquette, but the ability to make other people feel comfortable in your company – is an act of love.
A teenager who knows how to talk to grown-ups – who can look them in the eye, ask interesting questions and laugh in the right places – has a superpower that will never leave them. It will flatter every adult they meet, earning them leniency at school and university. It will help them get their first job, and every job thereafter. Teaching small talk is the single most effective thing you can do to improve your child’s prospects: vastly more important than violin lessons or extra maths.
