The North Georgia Zoo, Fear & Social Distancing
For the last two months I have pretty much only left my home to walk the dog, go for walks with my family, drop off packages full of The Weird Accordion to Al books at the post office and, if I’m feeling particularly ambitious, load up on supplies for the armageddon at Big Lots or the convenience store two blocks away that sells masks, paper towels and toilet paper.
So while I see reckless people on television and online cavalierly ignoring social distancing laws or gallivanting about without masks and get angry, there’s something a little abstract and indirect about that simmering rage. Yesterday, however, we decided to go on a little road trip to a drive-through zoo about an hour outside of the Atlanta neighborhood where we live where where you can watch animals from the safe distance of your car.
In the cute little town where the zoo was located the streets were packed with small town residents enjoying a day out without bothering with masks or any protective covering whatsoever. Watching so many people ignoring social distancing rules and eschewing masks made me incredibly anxious. I felt like I was on the verge of having a low-grade panic attack the whole afternoon.
My five year old son Declan had a much different response. Full of guileless jubilation, he yelled out happily, “Yay, yay! Corona is dead! Yay, yay! Corona is over!”
It’s easy to see where Declan could have gotten that impression. These people were certainly acting as if the threat had passed and the time to return to normal had arrived.
I don’t know that it will ever be time to return to normal. I’m not sure that the concept of “normal” exists anymore in a post-COVID-19 world. We talk a lot about the New Normal but I fear that the defining characteristic of this New Normal is that nothing will ever truly be normal again.
The world will have changed too much, for the worse but also in some ways for the better, for it to ever be possible to go back to the way things were.
Like Frank Stallone’s greatest, and also only hit, this pandemic is far from over. Yet Trump, Brian Kemp and a whole lot of folks eager to open the country back up again for business even if it means literally untold deaths are behaving as if COVID-19 is as finished as Frank Stallone’s music and acting career because it suits their financial and political interests.
It feels like we’re in Jaws and the shark has just begun his killing spree but after a short period of closing the beach, they’ve re-opened it on the logic that yes, some people will obviously get torn apart by an underwater killing machine but still other people will have a nice time at the beach during which they don’t die horrible deaths.
Sure, the screaming of swimmers being killed by the killer shark will probably be a real buzzkill for all the sunbathers on the beach but are we going to ruin their fun day in the sun just because somebody is undoubtedly going to be killed that day, and every subsequent one, until they do something about the killer shark problem?
Trump is so eager to get the economy going again that he’s willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives to the pagan God of the free market economy, to ensure a robust economic harvest.
It’s fucking terrifying, is what it is. We’re doing our part to flatten the curve and be responsible but there’s a whole world of folks out there convinced that the worst is over and that if they just wash their hands occasionally they’ll be safe.
I wish I could tell my son that, yes, Corona is over, that it’s dead. I’d like to believe that. But it’s just not true and people will die if we continue to tell ourselves and each other that comforting and deadly lie.
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