 |
| As with everything else this spring, I have so many mixed feelings about this. |
This is the news we've been waiting for, all this time, and yet, it doesn't quite feel like a Victory. Check out the graphic, which I got from the Warren County Times Observer. The first line says "Not a return to the way things were, but changing behavior for a new normal."
That New Normal thing. I don't know. I know I've bandied about those words on this very blog myself, but they're sounding a little foreboding to me in this context.
New Normal.
There's nothing even remotely normal about New Normal, it seems. We're going around with half our faces covered, staying two yards from one another. We had a tendency to misunderstand each other effectively enough when we could see each other's facial expressions and stand close enough not to have to use enhanced indoor voices. The capacity for misunderstanding while we're all in masks out in public is boundless.
I have to be honest. I'm having a really hard time reconciling this New Strange superimposed over The Way Things Used To Be. Last night, we ordered from one of our favorite pizza places, and since we had my vehicle and my mask was the only one on board, I went in to pick dinner up for us. This was a place that Before Coronavirus, you could either sit down or take out. Last night, the tables were all taped off, as they have been, I assume, ever since this started. I haven't been in there, all this time. There was a big plexiglass shield in front of the counter where the register is, and a clear shower curtain hangs to protect the curved part of the operation. It's a smallish space inside, so when I arrived, there was a masked woman standing just outside the door. She explained she was standing out there in the drizzle because she felt it was too crowded inside for her to be able to practice proper social distance.
Since she was technically ahead of me in line, I felt like I would have been a giant jerkface for stepping inside, even if I had every intention of making sure she went ahead of me. And then one of the town cops was on his way in, and he said to the both of us "You don't have to wait outside."
That was all I needed to hear, and I followed him in. So did my line-mate, although she looked visibly uncomfortable. There were a lot of people in there. There was no real rhyme or reason to how people were queued, but it seemed to be working out. Until another woman came through the door and looked at everybody and said "Are you all waiting?" We all said we were, of course. I wondered if she meant "Are you all waiting to order, or are you waiting for your food?" because otherwise, that just seems like one of those questions that would get you a sign handed to you from Bill Engvall.
And then. She went up to the counter and ordered 3 slices, ahead of everyone who was waiting to order or announce that we were there to pick up orders that we phoned in, and the woman who was paying at the register turned to me and said "WEREN'T YOU NEXT?!"
"No," I said, indicating the woman who'd been waiting outside the door when I stepped in front of the building. "She was. But it's okay."
"Well, no it's not!" said the woman paying at the register.
I let it go. Next up was my line-mate, and as she stepped to the register, I stepped up to the counter, six feet away from her and kind of directed everybody into a more efficient queueing process to try to prevent more awkward moments like that from happening, at least while my particular cohort was in there. And all was well as I left, I think.
I'm not telling that story because I think I saved the day or anything. The real heroes of last night were behind the counter, slinging pizza and subs and wings like manic champs. All I did was try to take some of the awkward and confusion out of the way everybody was trying to herd around. I know the woman who accidentally jumped the line seriously accidentally did it. But I could see that the woman who was already paying at the counter was on-edge, and sensed that others were on-edge, too. I was on-edge myself, but Trying Real Hard. Another version of me, Before, From Another Time, would have jumped on the line-jumper just like Payin' Lady did. And I should mention that at Age 41, I was one of the younger people waiting. These all would have been Adultier Adults I would have been looking to for guidance in other situations.
Is this what the New Normal is going to be? Masked and high-strung as all get-out?
I hope not. I hope that as Things relax, so do we. We've all had over two months of being wrapped too tight. We're worrying about incomes and the economy and mental health. COVID-19 and all its accessories have taken tolls on every single one of us; no one is unscathed, even the people who seem to be sailing along unaffected. They've got their own stuff going on, and COVID and shut-down ramifications certainly factor in.
Mental health is a real concern.
That on-edge feeling I mentioned? That snappishness? Something I have learned from interacting with people and really reflecting on myself and my own actions ... okay, ruminating on myself and my own actions ... snappishness isn't the thing itself. When someone's snapping and not having a lot of patience with those around them, there's something else going on. Stress. Who among is isn't stressed right now? Tension. Sorrow. Fatigue. Worry.
The magical thing- and I serve that up with an eyeroll so huge I think I sprained my eyeball muscles just now- the magical thing about it is that we might not even realize how stressed or tense or sorrowful or grieving or tired or worried we really are. We might not even realize we're being snappish. That's kind of the point of it, isn't it? Snap is a quick action in the moment, the critter-brain rearing up and barking and biting before you can think and stop it. You just sense that you're feeling some type of way, and it isn't right.
Snappish is probably a little more contagious than any virus. There's no incubation period - you can catch it and spread it pretty instantaneously. Masks don't filter it out. In fact, I think the masks are causing some anxiety in people, and anxiety can make us snappish.
So as we're kind of emerging from Pandemic Purgatory, I feel like we're entering a Post-Pandemic Purgatory, with this Going Green and the New Normal. I think the "New" part acknowledges that nothing about this is normal at all. It's still messed up as cluck. And I'm so conflicted about resisting "New Normal" or falling into line, because AT LEAST they're not saying "stay home as much as possible, at all costs" anymore. At least we have that.
When I said "New Normal," I guess I was speaking to a reset of things that sucked about Normal that we accepted but were not working. Relying on other countries for most of our manufacturing. That had become Normal, and it isn't right. The way farmers are pretty much screwed- they work the hardest and see the smallest financial reward for their efforts. A healthcare system that's really sick-care, no matter what red tape you tie it up in and the label you stick on it. A justice system that's so far out of whack that I wonder if Lady Justice wears a blindfold because she just can't bear to see the perversion anymore. A broken education system in which the people who are actual experts are treated like idiots and the idiots at the top who have no clue how anything works are calling the shots. A legal system where the people making and dictating the rules have the least bit of knowledge or common sense about how freakin' anything works. The New Normal my heart hoped for from this reset orbited around those things. And maybe, maybe, maybe... those things take time. But I feel like the longer it takes to make something else, the more it's just the same old turds wrapped in shinier tinfoil and labeled with "New" and we're just supposed to be thrilled that they Changed!
As we creep cautiously from our Coronabunkers, we're seeing that there's just rubble left of the way things were. This "reset" the most optimistic of us hoped the shutdown would be (and I was one of them at the Beginning) was more like a wildfire, and instead of cleaning out the undergrowth and scrub and making way or Good New, right now it feels like all that's left is rubble to sift through. I drive past parks where I'd like to take my daughter, and they're all taped off like crime scenes. The few places I've gone into during this, they're familiar enough, but modified to the point that they feel like surreal hellscapes.
Phase Red, Phase Yellow have taken such a toll on so much. Mental health. Relationships. Stability. Certainty. Security. Our Humanity.
These are the things we've lost in the fire.
I hope we can get over the Awkward and Discomfort that we are certain to experience as we Go Green. New Normal, at least in this sense, is hopefully a transition period, where we can start to stretch back out and relax a bit. Hopefully take the lessons we've (again, hopefully) learned from the Coronafire, sift through the rubble, pick out the good bits, let the stuff that wasn't working and hasn't worked scatter to the four winds, and allow new growth.
Just be kind out there, Friends. Even as we give people space in the social distance sense, try to give your fellow humans space when they misunderstand or are snappish or awkward right now. Give yourself the space, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment