Jun 01, 2020
Every time people complain about being stuck at home, I think, “Well, at least this didn’t happen in the 80s.” Imagine?
You’d have just been STUCK. I remember thinking back then, “Man, you can order a pizza for delivery. You can have flowers delivered. Why can’t you have ice cream delivered?” My entire fantasy in junior high was to have ice cream delivered to my house.
Now you can have groceries, candy, ice cream, or restaurant food delivered. (Unless you live where I live. In which case, anyone except Walmart will deliver to you. I’m too far off the beaten path for Walmart. Yay, me.)
So you are stuck at home, BUT you can have ANYTHING you want, ANYTIME. (Oh, AND you can watch movies WITHOUT COMMERCIALS while you eat your ice cream.)
Only ordering delivery is EVEN BETTER now because now we have the INTERNET, which means that even introverts can get what they want painlessly because you don’t have to actually get on the phone and TALK to anyone to place an order.
You don’t even have to actually ANSWER the door when the order arrives. Back in the 80’s you had to pay the driver cash before you could take your pizza. Now you just look out your peep hole and wait till they leave. Then you open the door, grab the goodies, bring them inside, wipe them down with bleach water, and enjoy! The entire process takes nothing more than internet access and a credit card. I could not have imagined anything more perfect in my 13-year old brain.
So I’ve learned some things from this whole staying home thing. I’m ready for my “Do Over."
Like, let’s go back to March 1. Let me stock up on children’s Tylenol and distilled water and 1/8-inch elastic and milk and get my garden going and organize my garage and get my hair cut and go to the dentist and the OB/GYN and the eye doctor and my regular doctor and check out ALL the good books from the library and cancel my gym membership (oh, wait. I did that back in 2017).
Oh, and I would TOTALLY go to all those Zoom trainings they offered at work. In fact, I would start TEACHING on Zoom just to get things going. I don’t mean from home; I mean in the classroom. I’d be like, “OK, everyone open up Zoom and log in. Let’s do this.” And then we’d all just sit in a dark classroom and have class on Zoom. Remote class. In each other’s presence. So, by the time they were alone in their houses, my students would be professional Zoomers.
Instead, my family got to see how what happens when you actually run out of things like lettuce and distilled water.
We learned how to make our own distilled water for my husband’s C-PAP machine because the stores were all out, and the only place you could buy it was Amazon–for $87 a gallon.
The Day Without Lettuce turned into One Child’s Week of Sitting in the Bathroom with Books. And now we have a garden.
So please. Just let me go back to March 1. I’ll get it right this time. I will start a garden. I will buy distilled water. And I promise I won’t hoard it or sell it on Amazon for $87 a gallon.
