Tomorrow, Mike and I are going to drive Nick to his college to pick up his stuff from the dorm. His school is going to do the rest of the semester online. So, we have to go get his stuff.
“I thought you guys are self-quarantined?” you might say.
We are. So, here’s what has to happen. We get up in the morning and leave before I’ll have enough sleep. Then, we drive five hours across the state of Washington to the edge of Idaho. We can make stops. We can. For gas. And to pee.
But when we stop, we have to use nitrile gloves on the gas nozzle to keep from getting infected. It never occurred to me how DEAD SERIOUS Mike was about keeping this virus out of our house until he said that he used nitrile gloves when he pumped gas and touched the keypad. I’d been using hand sanitizer after I was done. And, he told me, he throws the gloves away when he’s finished. He doesn’t reuse them.
Is this the beginning of some fucking horror movie?
Then, when we arrive at the dorm, we have to put on more gloves, open doors, press elevator buttons, and pick up the care package I sent to Nick from the front desk if anyone is even working there. Then we have to clear out his dorm room without touching anything his roommate might have touched, right? Nope. Gloves.
Wait. Are they different gloves than the ones we used to come into the building? I can’t keep my imaginary germ contamination straight.
It’s exhausting.
When we’re done packing, we can’t rest and stay at a hotel overnight. Do you know how many germs could lie in wait on those comforters, on the floor, the walls, on the remote? Was the woman who made the bed feeling a little sick? Did she cough then pat the pillows into place with a hand that she’d used unconsciously to touch her face?
Then, without stopping for food, not even fast food, we’re going to take two cars because we believed at the beginning of the semester that Nick needed to have a car on campus, and we’re going to drive them back across the state back home without ever stopping at a restaurant. Not even drive thru.
That’s obvious to me. We have to make sure we don’t get any coronavirus snotrockets on our food. I worked at a fast food joint when I was a teenager. I know what happens to that food when the manager isn’t looking. Plus, Mike doesn’t want me to shop at the grocery store today. So we have to kludge together two meals for three people on what I bought at Costco that day last week when I blindly bought four boxes of rice, a five pound bag of flour, eight pounds of dried pasta, six bags of chips, and a flat of green beans. Seriously, they were out of toilet paper, diet Coke, canned corn, and monitors.
I didn’t even have recipes with me. Now, I realize that I should have sat down beforehand with recipes and figured out what ingredients I needed for actual meals. I don’t have enough cheese for baked ziti. I don’t have enough ground beef for chili. I have enough rice to cook it every day for four months. I can make bread for sandwiches but we’re out of sliced meat and cheese. I don’t have a thing I know how to do with all those canned green beans. What the actual fuck am I going to do with a flat of canned green beans?
And so we’re going to bring a lot of odd food parts, cooked pasta with seasoning, tuna salad, homemade bread, and the remaining bag of chips so we can picnic safely as we drive back home tomorrow. And I’m out of greens for my salads, so I’m going to bring a can of green beans and eat it cold. Ten hours of driving in one day on pasta, tuna sandwiches, chips, and a fucking can of green beans.
Meanwhile, my friends called me on FaceTime last night from the happy hour I couldn’t go to. It was loud. They were laughing. The place looked busy and happy. We talked about how the schools were closing. We talked about how they were working from home. We talked about ordering a Corona, with lime. Don't forget the lime. It has vitamin C in it. Someone they knew stopped by and hugged them. Then, she remembered her social distancing and did an elbow bump afterward. I watched them. They were eating sliders and macaroni and cheese prepared by people in another room. I watched them eat.
Macaroni and cheese. I could see it in the foreground where they put the phone.
They lived in a different universe than I did. That was the only explanation. I had to use a glove to touch the gas station keypad and they were eating coronavirus macaroni and cheese and social distancing at happy hour.
I know this is important. I do. I love my family and I don’t want to struggle to get them beds in an overrun hospital next week if I screw up and forget to use a glove on a keypad tomorrow.
But watching how the other half lived, the healthy half, the ones with coronavirus confidence, was hard.
Thank you for listening, jules