The Future Is Crazy

Hello, Friends! How are you doing right now? I mean, how are you REALLY doing?

Some people I know are really hitting the wall with this whole Covid-19 situation. A lot of people are on their second and third week of isolation and/or working from home and I can tell that stress is running high and patience is low. Some of y’all are going stir crazy, and that’s understandable.

Okay…it’s NOT understandable to me, but that’s because I could stay in my house for 3 months and never miss seeing people. I’ve come to accept I’m probably not normal.

In an ironic twist of cosmic cruelty, my job is considered essential, and though I could easily perform it at home, I am required to report to the office. It’s like the Universe is forcing me to try to be more of a people person.

Anyway, as many of you as I see trying to do the right thing and lay low to flatten the curve, I’m observing an awful lot of people who don’t believe this is a serious situation and would prefer to be the Typhoid Mary of the 21st century. These people are angry at the inconvenience of it all and believe that the projected death rates are either blown out of proportion or are “acceptable”.

You people are solidifying the whole reason I was a “social distancer” before it was a thing, and you are the reason I will continue to stay away from people after this is over.

As my aunt V used to say, “You make my butt want to suck lemons.”

After the CDC finally recommended that EVERYONE wear a mask while out, I had to make a trip to CVS. I wore my cute kitty cat mask that a coworker’s mother made for me:

I was the only one in CVS wearing one, including the people working there.

In a drugstore.

Where sick people congregate to buy things.

I could tell there were people looking at me like they haven’t seen 20,000 times on the news or their social media that this is now a common recommendation.

It wasn’t until I was getting ready to leave that an older man walked in wearing a bandana over his face, looking like Jesse James about to rob the Wells Fargo stagecoach, that I finally felt “normal”.

Anyway…

The Husband Dude was able to take advantage of some of the new regulations regarding FMLA and the Covid-19 situation, so he is now at home for the forseeable future. That means I now have a house-husband and I expect a clean house and dinner on the table at 6 p.m. on the dot. I also expect to see him vacuuming in pearls and high heels.

Just kidding. If he actually read this blog, he’d be really annoyed with me for saying that.

I’ll settle for a house that isn’t going to end up on an episode of Hoarders and something edible to eat some time before I go to bed at 9 p.m. Pearls and heels, though, are still a requirement.

Don’t look at me that way.

Shane started his “distance learning” this week too, which means he’ll be doing all of his assignments online. The really cool thing about our school district is that all the high school kids already had Chromebooks that they did the majority of their work on anyway. They were pretty much set up for and ready for handling things online, so the only difficulty will be in getting extra help when he needs it. Kudos to the hard-working teachers, though. They’re setting up all kinds of ways for the kids to reach them for help.

I seem to remember reading a story in school that was supposed to be about a little girl in the “future”. And by future, I mean 1995. Her house was like The Jetsons and she “went” to school in her living room in front of a computer with a TV-type screen where she could see and talk to the robot teacher.

Well, the teachers aren’t robots (unless you ask the conspiracy theorists), but a lot of what I read about has come to pass. We have computers that we’re using for distance learning from houses that are quite automated. I mean, we do have robot vacuums and mops and we’ve got wire taps Alexa and Google that answer questions, turn our lights on and off, play music and lock the front door.

You can order food and pay for it on an app, then have it delivered to your home, without having to ever get yourself or your wallet out.

I can write all kinds of ridiculous things and publish them for the world to see, without having a job at a newspaper, magazine or a book deal.

I’m still waiting for those flying cars, though. And don’t tell me we already have them. We have prototypes. We won’t “have” them until they are actually a regular thing out in the real world.

So crazy that my son is going to school, talking to his teachers and having group meetings with his classes all from his desk in his room.

As usual, though, this pandemic has brought out the flat-out wackos. I mean, I knew they were out there. I just didn’t realize how many of them there were. Thanks to social media, I no longer have confidence that our species will be able to prevent extinction, and it will, in fact, be a welcome event.

It’s a shame the dinosaurs didn’t survive. They would’ve done a much better job with this planet.

But I digress…

Back to the wackos. I usually just shake my head and keep scrolling rather than engage the crazies on social media, but even I can’t resist sometimes. There are days when the sarcasm rises like bile in my throat the morning after a crazy night of letting your college boyfriend take tequila shots off your belly button and drinking suicide punch out of a trash can.

Not that I would know anything about that.

A few days ago, one of the people on my neighborhood Facebook group asked why our response is so significant for this virus as compared to previous things. Not really what the neighborhood FB group is for, but whatever.

That’s when Mr. Conspiracy Theorist decided this was his platform to show off his special brand of crazy:

I couldn’t resist. I mean, I was powerless over the cray-cray and I succumbed with this response (I left other people’s responses in the screenshot to show you that I was not the first one to think this idiot was a dumbass):

Unfortunately, this guy thought I was engaging him, and even worse, that I somehow agreed with him. I don’t know how my response would be taken as anything other than absolute sarcasm, but apparently being stupid goes hand in hand with lunacy. I really didn’t want to state the obvious to him and tell him I was trolling him, so instead I let Weird Al do the talking:

He probably still didn’t get it.

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring!