Well, here we are. We are left with the following conundrum: Is it better to receive our bad news incrementally, or all at once?
Would we have been better off, two or three months ago, to just have the government tell us to stay home, avoid physical contact, shop sparingly, and stop hoarding toilet paper, rubbing alcohol and Aloe Vera (apparently alcohol and Aloe Vera can be mixed to make hand sanitizer)? Linda (my wife) and I went on a hunt Sunday looking for these ingredients … And found none. And since we’re running low on hand sanitizer, and because it’s harder to come by than Beatles tickets back in 1965, we’ve had to resort to this.
But wait. In my email Monday — in amongst the blizzard of spam — was one from a site claiming itself to be “Natural Health Habits” that proclaimed “hand sanitizer doesn’t work.”
Well if that’s true, then what was I doing running around looking for all this stuff then? All it was doing was taking me away from my other preoccupation as we hunker down and wait out the Zombie Apocalypse: watching every “Perry Mason” episode ever made (or pick your favorite binge-watch show). I know every episode by now. I not only know who gets killed before it happens, I know who the killer ends up being too. I can even recite dialogue before it actually happens.
All of a sudden, these mundane activities take on greater meaning when there’s not much of anything else to do. And it doesn’t take long to get hooked, either. I don’t go to bed now without watching the 11:30 episode of Perry on MeTV.
The only difference I see between doing them now and having been doing them for the last three months, though, is the level of boredom. In all seriousness, the earlier intervention is applied, the better your chance of blunting the impact of that which you are seeking to stop, or at least curtail. I hope if there’s ever a “next time” for something like this, those in authority who chose to sit on this until it was impossible to ignore will learn from this.
Then again, we are, sad to say, pretty stupid people. I’m quite aware that had the president, or governor, begun talking up “social isolation” back in January, they’d have been greeted with howls of protest from people convinced they were “overreacting.”
Now? We’re about two steps away from being under martial law. So what did we gain by waiting?
Whether in January or now, we’re left to contemplate the meaning of our wretched lives. Are we essential? Is it OK to walk down the street as long we keep the mandatory six feet of space?
Because the weather was so gorgeous over the weekend we took a couple of road trips for walks. Saturday it was York Beach in Maine, where you’d have thought a Woodstock reunion had been scheduled. There were people everywhere (all keeping their respectful distance). I swear, even the dogs stopped short of jumping all over me (and I am a magnet for them, which is fine with me).
You know how it is with walking. You’re going one way and another couple is going in the opposite direction.
You’re almost obligated to actually speak to each other. Yet the only words anyone spoke were “wow, is it nice to just get out!”
Yes it was. Sunday, we went up to St. John’s Prep to walk and we were literally the only two people up there. That, too, was special.
I go back and forth with a lot of this stuff. It’s hard not to let it creep into your head that, for heaven’s sake, they’re (whoever “they” are) working overtime trying to scare us into doing these ridiculous things in the name of public safety. Spend more than five minutes on the Internet and you’ll see them all. I saw one today that the news media were sensationalizing the survival-to-fatality ratio.
All I can say to that is I hope the survivor number is significantly higher. But the news is, and will always be, those who died.
Unless, of course, you want to make the case that the news is the number of airplanes that landed safely at Logan versus the one that may have crashed, killing everyone on board. I’d hate to see the day when the crash is the norm, and when this plague kills three times as many people as those who make it through.
So you have to put your fingers in your ears and go “lalalalalala” when you start hearing that propaganda. This stuff’s real.
But there are a couple of questions I’d like to see answered: is there healing power in toilet paper? And, come clean please. What’s the skinny on hand sanitizer? Asking for a friend.