What I’ll Miss About the Pandemic (Really)
For all the horror and grief, coughing and masking, there is plenty about the pandemic we will miss. Tweet
Highlights
It taught us about who we are, as individuals and as a society. Perverse as it may sound, a lot of us will look back on parts of it fondly.
Like the blessed quiet, after all the douchebags went into hiding at their second homes...
...or learning that the people you always suspected were batshit-crazy, truly are.
...and making sure to talk to certain friends at least once a week, like it might be the last call ever.
Yes, it was horrible. And tragic. But it was also amazingly interesting to live through — if you emerged on the living side, that is.
It taught us a lot about who we are, as individuals and as a society. And perverse as it may sound, some of us will actually look back on parts of it fondly,
“Well Liam, let me tell you about the time I chugged twelve to-go cocktails during the Great Pandemic of 2021!”
Anyway, what I already kind’ve miss:
Not having to get dressed up for work.
Or dressed at all.
Or work.
The blessed quiet, after all the douchebags went into hiding at their second homes.
The blessed quiet, after all the douchebags went into hiding at their second homes.
Driving in what used to be rush hour on empty streets. (And the accidents! How the fuck did anyone have an accident?)
Empty airports and airplanes that made flying never better, even though the couple across the aisle sprayed down their arm rests every five minutes.
Learning the people you always suspected were batshit crazy truly are because suddenly they were double-masked behind plastic face shields, wearing elbow-length surgical gloves, and generally looking like bee-keepers as they scuttled crab-like on empty streets. And yelling at you for approaching within twenty feet.
Confirming you’d never want to live in Riyadh, because the imams are right: face masks definitely are an erotic buzzkill.
Discovering that Jeffrey Toobin rubs one out at least once a day — and, more impressive, manages it staring at Masha Gessen.
The jaw-dropping astonishment of watching Cuomo canonized as New York tallied insane numbers of elderly deaths on his hands, and then watching DeSantis demonized while keeping the largest elderly population in the States alive.
The spectacle of 40-year olds freaking out about dying, even though the science they claim to revere shows their demographic was less than four percent of fatalities—and even then only if you had multiple risk factors.
And of people who haven’t been inside a church in forty years constantly proclaiming how blessed they are because it didn’t happen to them.
But mainly…realizing what, and who, really matters.
Making sure to talk to certain friends – like the one who’d still be there even if you were accused of embezzlement and the trial were going badly — at least once a week, and like it might be the last call.
Seeing the casual bravery of young, primarily minority women and men showing up to work every day to stock shelves, man checkouts and slice bologna at the supermarket.
FedEx, UPS and the USPS standing and delivering. Literally.
The courage of the truly at-risk who carried on — thanking the people working in markets, saying hey to cops, tipping ten bucks for two-dollar cups of coffee, and who would always make you feel we’d get through this.
The feeling of awe at living on the same planet as the scientists who, instead of watching doom TV or hiding in second homes, were inventing the vaccines. And saving the world. And giving us all a legitimate reason to use the word blessed.
