Today makes a full four weeks of quarantine for us.
It’s the first Sunday in 13 years that I haven’t sung during the Easter service.
We miss going to the Strand and chatting up high-risk seniors on park benches.
I haven’t filled my gas tank since Friday the 13th of last month, the last day of school, and our last orthodontist visit for the foreseeable future.
No Ross, no Lowe’s, no Hobby Lobby. We can’t even drop off used items to Goodwill.
And how we miss our restaurants! Will our favorite server, Victor, still have a job?
Who will keep our iced tea full come summer?
Meanwhile, kids are hating self-quarantine and distance learning.
They’d rather be at school, texting friends and ignoring their teachers, eating lunch off poorly-cleaned cafeteria tables and discussing lucrative employment opportunities in the 2020’s. Add cyberhacker to that list, boys–and marginal girls!
We long for the days of popping into the grocery store quickly, without 20 minutes of pre-planning, gloves, masks, sanitizer pump, and a towel to protect our car seats from the questionably COVID-covered grocery bags.
Even a trip to the corner Walgreen’s requires the same preparation. Oh, for the days of running inside quickly for their 2 for $1 Arizona green tea specials!
I could be in and out in under 5 minutes!
No more sitting in goat-powered Radio Flyers, eating Drumsticks with chocolate nubs at the bottom of the cones, and spilling the neighborhood tea while the pharmacist informs Mom that the prescription for Vicodin is not legit because the doctor forgot to use the new watermarked paper for narcotics.
We’ve all been there, right? Those were the days.
Why, there probably won’t even be play dates until May at the earliest! No more construction paper tepees and happy little trees.
But this shall yet pass, and soon we will gather on the plains for campfire grub again.
Life will begin to bear a semblance of normalcy, although never exactly the same.
Until then, don’t let it get your gander up! That is, your dander. Happy quarantining!
I Don't Get It 