Happy Anniversary?
It’s been a year…a freaking year…do you even remember normalcy? When we had the first shutdown, I thought it would be a month, at the most two. Then I thought, certainly by summer. When it didn’t happen in the summer I became less optimistic about the fall.
Now, it’s one year later. I started keeping a journal of the events as they happened in the early stages of the pandemic. For those of you that may have forgotten some of the things we were dealing with, I’m including some excerpts.
Day 1
“I heard from different people and today I learned they weren’t lying…There’s no toilet paper left in any of the stores. As a matter of fact there’s no paper products of any kind to be found including paper plates. We still have five rolls as of now, I’m not desperate enough to start using plates even if I can find them.”
The classes I was scheduled to teach began on March 1 and at the time I had no reason to expect it not to run the whole five weeks. I remember joking on that day about washing my hands in the rest room and then having to wait for somebody to come in so I didn’t have to touch the door handle when I exited.
Everything got real in a hurry. By the next week we were discussing how this may be our last class and it was. The campus was shut down the next week.
Day 2
“Still no toilet paper to be found. They’re showing footage on the news of people with carts full of the stuff…hundreds of rolls. How long do these people expect this to last and what the hell is coming out of them? There’s also no meat to be found. Not a single egg either. I guess people are trying to grow their own chickens. I didn’t like the way an overweight woman was eyeing me up at Walmart. She was looking at me like I might make a good Sunday dinner. Let’s hope we don’t resort to cannibalism.”
I did shows on March 13 and 14. Neither one was guaranteed until the last minute. I would open by saying,
“I don’t feel good…”
It was funny at the time. It’s not a joke anymore. I remember the crowds being extra enthusiastic that weekend. It was almost as if they knew it would be their last time out in a group setting for a long time.
Day 4
“We’re down to three rolls of toilet paper. As a way of helping to ration and because of the meat shortage, we had a block of cheese for dinner. If nothing else, it’ll bind us.”
Day 5
“It was a miserable night. Our block of cheese dinner didn’t agree with my wife’s lactose intolerance. We’re down to two rolls and a box of tissues.”
Day 6
“My wife Chrissie was able to order 36 rolls of toilet paper on Amazon. That should hold us for a while. We can use paper plates to eat on again and I’ll use those shredded old towels to wash the cars.”
Anyway, it’s been a long year. Now we’re being told that it’s possible by summer we could…have some normalcy. Finally some hope. We need it, this has been very aggravating. The only bright spot…we never ran out of toilet paper…Oh, and I wasn’t eaten by an obese Walmart dweller.
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