Stay Home

Think of this as some kind of vacation. There is this bogeyman outside and the doctors and lawyers and Indian chefs say everyone should stay home.

You are quarantined to your home. You are quarantined until further notice. You are quarantined or….?

Everyone has been hearing the news of a virus is sweeping the land and there is no shot or pill that will protect you from it, so the solution is to stay home.

Staying at home would seem like a holiday. All your toys are there. All your food is there. Even the toilet is in the same place. You can walk around in your undies and wake up whenever you want. You can couch surf your multitude channels of daytime television or binge watch movies. You can test some forgotten family recipes if you have all the ingredients.

How long will that last?

Remember Thanksgiving when all the family members you love gathered and after a few hours of gorging on a dead bird and watching football and slouchy down whatever alcohol your bar offers, you are ready to send them home.

But this is home. They are all here to stay. Maybe a couple of days? Maybe a week? Maybe a month? You are quarantined.

You can’t send the kids outside to play when they get cranky. The dog will have to walk itself and maybe not come back. The constant consumption of beans is fogging up the windows and the toilet paper stock is running out.

The schools will be closed. The factories will be closed. There will be no festivals. There will be no public transportation.

Without work, there is no paycheck. Working at home sounds like an alternate solution unless you work construction or service industry or law enforcement or utility maintenance.

There is no mail. There is no Amazon delivery. There is no pizza delivery.

How long will you crawl up the walls before you venture out, no matter what? Where will you go?

What if all the filling stations are closed? What if every grocery store is closed?  What if all the convenience stores and fast food stores and the corner breweries are closed?

What will you do when the television stops? What will you do when the radio stops? What will you do when the Internet stops? What will you do when the water coming out of your facet is brown? What will you do when your toilet doesn’t flush? What do you do when the lights go out?

It certainly isn’t time (yet) to panic, but what if all the great minds cannot find a solution the way they did polio or the flu or measles or the plague?

Should we release more ducks to eat the locust?