Society has been vexed for some
months about the infamous COVID-19, the 2019 corona virus flu. This is a world-wide scourge that has killed
hundreds of thousands of people, and sickened millions.
Severe numbers such as those have
imparted fear, almost to the point of being irrational, upon so many normally
balanced people.
On the one hand, we are told by
“authorities” to cower, uh, I mean shelter-in-place, until the threat of
COVID-19 has passed; on the other hand we should continue with life as normal
all the while remaining confined to the interior of our homes. Unless you are a hermit or an inmate, you
likely have never been separated from society – including your job, for any
length of time.
To prevent people from gathering
or forming groups, a new term popped up like a dog turd on your lawn; if you
step in it, suddenly it’s everywhere and almost impossible to get rid of.
That term is “social
distancing.” It seems as though some of
those aforementioned “authorities” conjured up a magical number we should keep
ourselves apart from one another. The
magical number to which I am referring is six-feet. Yep, six-feet.
A recent trip to the local
grocery market to desperately search for toilet paper, paper towels, and hand sanitizer,
convinced me society has lost its collective mind.
Masks normally used by house
spray painters and those professionals applying chemicals, were everywhere,
except on the shelves, for sale.
“Greeters” at the doors – who were actually counting the number of
bodies entering and leaving, wore them.
Customers and stock clerks had
them on, cashiers wore them, too. In
some states, it is illegal to enter a store as a customer without wearing a
mask. I hope that applies to those
wanting to commit armed robbery, too.
But I digress.
Arrows of blue tape now mark directions on aisle floors pointing the way “traffic” should flow to
prevent side-by-side contact of fewer than six-feet. Keep in mind these are the same people who
block the aisles, on a good day, with their carts creating store gridlock.
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| Ribbon and stick sport to which I was referring |
In any event, the authorities
further cancelled public events such as concerts, marathons, parades, and
sporting events.
Baseball, basketball, that stupid
thing with girls prancing around with a stick and ribbon, are all on-hold. NASCAR races were suspended because of the
safety of crews, media folks, and fans.
The good news is that NASCAR has
its own authorities who are free thinkers.
They immediately grabbed onto technology called “computers,” and created
a virtual race with its drivers operating racecar cockpit-like devices inside
their own, respective homes.
Linked via the internet, the
drivers “race” one another in a virtual world – not unlike an arcade video game
– with outstanding graphics, several races are providing a “fix” of sorts to
those NASCAR race fans undergoing withdrawal.
Jumping on the bandwagon, rumors
abound that baseball, and other sports may also play their games virtually.
Just this past weekend, the
annual Kentucky Derby horse race was also postponed until September. It was, however, “run” virtually with past
winners competing against each other.
I’m not a computer geek, so I
don’t know how these avatars can be made “equal” to compete in a virtual race.
Nonetheless, it happened, and Secretariat “won,” if you can say that.
Still, people are agog, pleased
to see some form of entertainment in the form of competition returning, with so
many cheering the results from a machine.
But now seems like an ideal time
for me to finally make my mark both on society and in my personal life.
I, too, can pretend – not unlike
Rob Reiner, Robert De Niro, and Debra Messing do professionally – to be an
athlete. I can win the The Masters, hit
the winning homerun in the World Series, and even snag an Olympic gold medal in
boxing or with that stupid stick and ribbon thing.
How great is that?
