Where were you when the world stood still?

If you are old enough, you know where you where when the President told you about “a date which will live in infamy”. You may be old enough to remember where you were when another President was assassinated. You may have remembered the death of Martin Luther King and the riots that followed. Bobby Kennedy lying on the kitchen floor? The space shuttle Challenger explosion? 9-11?

All these were sudden monumental changes in the time warp of life. Some may have affected more closely than others, but today’s pandemic has stopped the entire world. There is no escape or avoidance.

Do you remember when the bottom fell out? When your boss said the business was closing and everyone was laid off? When all the toilet paper was gone at the store? When no one came out to play?

How we all coop with this ‘new normal’ is an individual adjustment. Social media certainly shows some of our reactions but we can’t hear the whispers in the bedroom. The bank statement is the new reality. The children at home, every day, all the time, are the new reality. The routine of getting dressed for work, putting on make-up, shaving (perhaps even daily bathing) has become none essential.

There have been other times of mystery and fear, creating a medical panic in every community. Polio was the word of the ‘invisible enemy’ when I was growing up. I was scared of the iron lung but was too young to comprehend. My parents and my teachers lined me up in school with the rest of my classmates and we took our medicine.

Later in life there was this HIV thing that became all the talk. From the first reports it seemed like a ‘gay disease’ so I didn’t worry. Then there was talk that bi-sexual activity could spread to the ‘straight’. At the time I was single without a steady girlfriend so it made clubbing more cautious. I met a girl who said she was on the pill and I didn’t need to put on protection. Weeks later I talked her into donating blood. We went to the local blood bank and I laid on the gurney and pumped out a pint, but where was she? Of course they gave us an Aid’s test before we were guided into the draining area and she never showed up. Was I about to find some finality to this relationship? I went into the waiting room and she was eating a cookie. “I’m anorexic and can’t give blood” she smiled.

1957-1958 Pandemic (H2N2 virus), 1968 Pandemic (H3N2 virus), 2009 H1N1 Pandemic (H1N1pdm09 virus), Ebola virus disease (EVD), SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV), and what other boogie boo I don’t remember. There has always been Cancer and Obesity and Diabetes and Tuberculoses and Measles and Mumps and Heart Attacks and a flood of physical ailments we have had for years and years. Start listing emotional and mental deficiencies and you about got everyone.

So maybe we will never see each other smile again. We will have to stand apart to speak behind mask. There will no more be gatherings for baseball games, weddings, birthday celebrations, and Sunday prayers or movie theatres. Children will only be able to play with their siblings and relatives can only be talked to on screen. Television will be full over cooking shows and reruns and cartoons for there will be no sports. Shopping will have to be done online with questionable delivery times. The shared experience of hanging out with your friends will become history. Meeting new people will become a click on Tinder or Facebook hoping the profile image is the same as they might appear in person.

Motivation and inspiration will fade under the lack of deadlines. Anxiety will be where the next meal comes from while the money runs out. Summer family vacations to the beach or Disneyland are the things of the past. Toilet paper and rent payments will replace the idea of shopping for that new car.

Your children will grow up before your eyes but will not leave for all the schools are closed and there is no place to go. Business conferences on line are a waste of airtime for the business probably won’t open again. If you are an essential worker making time-and-a-half for hazard pay is wondering why you can’t sleep in like everyone else.

There will be no cookouts and fireworks for July 4^th. There will be no dressing the kids up and going door to door for candy on Halloween. Christmas won’t have Santa coming down the chimney and all the gifts will have smiling faces.

The historians will write about the day when the cure was discovered and saved mankind from deadly extermination.

Or not.