Calla Lilies

Being the retired guy, I had a head start on everyone else for this period of self-isolation. For years now, I’ve been living a life where everyday is Saturday. Now that this lifestyle is also the new normal for many other Americans, I’m here to offer them some advice. As the days drag on from one Saturday to the next, I find that it is helpful to divide the week up into the traditional small weekend and the new-new big weekend. This grouping of the days gives the week a semblance of the structure that it once held for everyone. I know that this convention lacks the rigor of a work week, but what are you going to do?

Accompanying this pandemic is an economic crisis that is also terrifying. Jobs are disappearing, markets are in turmoil and no one knows how much worse it will get, before this is all over. Many people are dying and many more are getting horribly sick. I hope that when we finally make it past this scourge and our thoughts turn from lessons learned to how we will face the future, time will be taken to remember those who have fallen. I hope our sorrow over the loss of life is deemed more important than people’s money loss. Otherwise, we have evolved little beyond our ancient lizard brain that is only capable of sharing the dinosaur’s last thought, before they went extinct, “Oh no, the economy!”

Fierce!

When you say, “I can’t go out, because of coronavirus.” This makes you sound whiny, boring and weak. But when you say, “I’ve sworn an oath of solitude until this blight is purged from these lands.” That makes you sound heroic, valiant and fierce. Others will assume you have a sword, a very big sword and it is impossible for them to check if you really do, because, you know coronavirus. That is of course until you start waving it about on Zoom. Why is it that some guys will stand 5’ 8” from you and call it six feet?

It is amazing to me on how much and how quickly things have changed as of late. Can you remember what life was like before this epidemic struck? Can you remember the joy of last Christmas? Remember that Peloton commercial that everyone mocked. In this ad, a fit young woman seemed to be at some pains, as she tried to deal with the exercise bike that her husband had gifted her. There were overtones of poor body image in the derision. I bet a lot of wives right now wish their husbands had bought them a Peloton for Christmas. One silver lining from this plague is that the Antivaxxers been awfully quiet as of late.