Here’s another in the “Outside My Window” series, chronicling life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID
The COVID pandemic has changed our lives in innumerable ways. We can’t go out to restaurants and eat inside. Going to concerts, out to the movies, or to the ball game is risky behavior. We can’t “politic” in the normal ways: going door-to-door is a way to spread the disease. Even the act of having a campaign rally is a point of controversy. Mr. Trump has them to prove that we are “over” COVID, even flaunting local and state regulations. He packs in the crowds with no masks, chanting and cheering and still yelling “lock her up”. Mr. Biden doesn’t have them, and he consistently wears a mask to show he cares about COVID.
Even going to a neighborhood bar to have a drink and catch up on the world is risky, and in fact, perhaps the riskiest behavior. That’s why the bars are closed early. It gives less time to stand together at the rail, and less opportunity to consume enough alcohol to forget “the new rules”. The hardest part of the pandemic is that we are social. Humans like to be around each other, and of course, that’s how the disease is spread. COVID has cut us off. Everyone needs a hug – but can’t have one.
Time
We even have divided “time” based on the pandemic. There was before, now, and there will be an after. The bright line is drawn on March 15th 2020. It was the day the world turned, everything happened, the craziness started, and that we discovered people are somehow “bad” but the outside was “good”. In the words of the Revolutionary War marching song, the world turned upside down.
And now COVID is even being blamed for cracking teeth.
Not making that up. It was brought to my attention yesterday: American dentists are finding a dramatic increase in the need to treat patients for cracked and ground down teeth. The technical term for it is bruxism, when folks grind their teeth, often in their sleep. Complaints include tooth and mouth pain, sore jaws, headaches, and of course, broken teeth. Dentists link it to stress: our world of now is so much more stressful than before. And I thought my cracked tooth was all about getting old: damn COVID.
Dropped Shoes
So yesterday was my birthday, and my wife and I managed to find a restaurant on a nearby lake with picnic table seating. We spent a few hours there, eating pizza and drinking some beer. It felt very normal, very before. The restaurant staff was happy for us to stay as long as we liked. The tables were “socially distanced”, and it didn’t matter anyway. Hardly anyone was there. As the bartender said, we’ll stay open until the end of the month, and then close for the season.
There will be a lot of places that don’t re-open, until the world turns right side up.
There is another old expression: waiting for the other shoe to drop. For those who don’t get it, it comes from living in the downstairs apartment. When the upstairs neighbors came home they’d take off their shoes. You’d hear one drop on the floor, then wait for the other one to drop.
We are waiting for the other shoe to drop in so many ways. Here in Pataskala, our kids are back in school, fulltime “regular” education. But when we look at what’s happening on college campuses, COVID infection rates are jumping and thousands of students are quarantined. Kids (or young adults) are acting like kids: who’s surprised about that? How long will it take for similar behavior to get to the high schools, and for local infection rates to jump?
Getting to After
Isn’t that exactly what we should expect when the COVID “message” is so confused? Even our national leaders take diametrically opposite views of what should be done. Folks can choose their behavior based on their political beliefs.
I get it. We want our world back. We want to be like before. And many are willing to forget the realities of now to get it that way. Which means that now will last a lot longer than it has to, and after is even farther away.
We all need a hug, and a virtual one just won’t do it.
