When religions are one (or none) and spirituality is top shelf, when disease and fear are non-existent, when humans don’t wear masks or criticize those who do, maybe we’ll be onto something. Politics is on its own.
It’s been a short long haul the past couple of months, affecting all of us, and we found out how tenderly we can genuinely look out for one another.
We were told there was a highly contagious, easily transmitted, tricky virus that was hungry for human lungs, and conventional therapies weren’t touching it. Its origin is either not known, or known and not disclosed.
Not that it matters. Some say this health wreck is designed to ease people into understanding that cash money is much too germy, so digital money will replace it. Others say there will be mandatory vaccinations soon. Optimists and pessimists say this is preliminary Armageddon.
Sure, we’ve been helpful to each other and we did it in – what’s that phrase? – a New York minute. We kept our distance, cooked our food and showed just how efficiently we could manage, reassess and readjust. Everybody I know lost money.
Long ago, when a kid in the home had chicken pox, the city or county put a sign in the front yard warning people that someone inside had the highly contagious virus. The sign wasn’t a shaming, it was a public health necessity. The virus spread by those who coughed or sneezed droplets that stayed in the air until the next host walked right through them. Sound familiar?
Why aren’t there signs now? It would prevent people from knocking on the door and asking for a donation or help putting a fire out. It would be cleaner than wearing a mask that deprives your body of bacteria and viruses it needs to build your immunity. Didn’t we learn that immunity is necessary for our health? If we don’t fight things, we can’t fight things.
The interesting thing is, people who insist on medical privacy laws are quick to point out the compliance flaws of others. Those who seem to perpetually shop get all warped because cashiers, required or desperate enough to show up for work, are not masking properly. The easy solution would be to stop going to stores.
This really does lead to Mother’s Day. My mom was five-feet tall, 105 pounds, red-headed, and a Society page writer for the Dayton Daily News, where she met my dad, a sportswriter.
She gave me the whole arena. My brothers were in their sevens and tens when I was born, so child raising was on automatic pilot. I was expected to use good sense, not fake a bath, and not get kidnapped. If I did that, no problems.
That ease of childhood gave me the irrepressible, maybe irresponsible, arrogance I get to grow old with. It’s why I believe that a newspaper is a tent pole for a neighborhood or community. It’s why I keep working on my Mark Twain license. It’s why I loved and still think of my mom every day, not just on corsage day.
Gotta share this – my favorite TV remark of the week was Sunday night when the Springfield weatherman was explaining upper lows that might include hail the size of bowling balls, brawny winds, hallucinatory thunderstorms, foaming tornadoes, etc., and said, “Be sure you’re well-dressed if you have to go out.”
Still laughing.