u got the look

Let's talk about this asshole, shall we? Why is he an asshole? I'll get to that in a minute.

Remember back before March 2020? Before we were all sent home from our office jobs to "work from home?" Unless you are over 100 years old and you lived through the last pandemic that was experienced worldwide, this was a whole new experience for almost everyone. As the tedious, unsure days of the pandemic raged on, going out in public and mingling with your fellow human became a rare event. However, a strange phenomenon occurred almost organically. People began to express a compelling feeling of camaraderie. An overwhelming "we're all in this together" attitude arose among humankind. A feeling of goodness and benevolence. Helping your fellow earth-dweller through the hard times became an everyday occurrence. Helping those having difficultly dealing with the pandemic — both physically and mentally — became second nature. Then we all got vaccinated and we all went back to our offices and we all started going out in public and we all regained our disdain for our fellow humans.

Back to normal.

My wife and I went to BJ's Wholesale Club yesterday. The store was fairly busy for 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon. It was the weekend before Thanksgiving, so I could understand the added crowd... although the woman exiting the store with merely two boxes of Cheerios and a container of sour cream puzzled me, but who am I to question someone's holiday traditions. We, too, were there to purchase some of the ingredients for our Thanksgiving meal in what would be the second of possibly four grocery store stops.

Once our cart was filled, we made our way up the the check-out area at the front of the store. That's where we encountered the asshole I alluded to earlier. But wait.... I'm getting ahead of myself.

The check-out lines were long. So long, in fact, that they snaked way back into the retail area of the store. Still-shopping customers had difficulty navigating the featured Christmas department while weaving around other customers who had already made their selections. The recent, pandemic-related practice of "social distancing" was somewhat relaxed, despite bright red labels affixed to the floor instructing customers to maintain a gap of six feet between them and fellow shoppers. Being respectful (pandemic or not), we kept a comfortable amount of space between us and the guy in front of us.

Evidently, not comfortable enough for him.

Since another pandemic-related practice — wearing face masks — has been implemented, our immediate interpretations of another person's feelings via facial expressions have been seriously impeded. The only thing we have to go by now is someone's eyes. Y'know, they say "the eyes are the windows to the soul." The guy in line in front of us.... well, there was no mistaking what was going on in his soul. If his eyes were lasers, they would have bored a hole through everything in our cart before moving on to our respective foreheads. From the look he gave us when we joined the line, and without hearing a word from him, I instinctively backed up a few feet. After his initial glare, he stood and silently surveyed each and every item in our cart. I could actually see his eyes stop and align themselves with each bag, box and plastic container. Before his eyes shifted to the next item, they would narrow angrily and reveal a palpable judgement of disgust. 

I stood by our cart as Mrs. P wandered in and out of the nearby aisles. Every so often, she would return with an interesting game or toy to show me. We would have a brief conversation about what she brought over. In my peripheral vison, I could sense the guy in front of us intrusively hanging on every word of our conversation. I could also see him silently shaking his head in an equally judgmental capacity, previously bestowed upon our grocery choices.

The line actually moved at a pretty good clip, bringing us within visual proximity of the cashier area. At this point, the single line fed each of the operating cash wraps. The guy in front of us — the asshole — chose the cashier to the left. We went right. As my wife entered her membership credentials into the electronic terminal, I began to arrange our soon-to-be purchases on the conveyer belt. I glanced over to our former line-mate, curious to see his progress. He was standing behind a woman who was methodically, albeit slowly, rifling though her purse, obviously searching for some form of payment. Our former line-mate — the asshole — stood rigid, arms tightly folded across his chest, his laser eyes burning a hole in the back of the woman's head.

Yep, we are on our way to "back to normal." There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, it may be a laser.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

enough about you, let's talk about life for a while

Look, I don't want this to become the "quarantine" blog, so I'd like to make today's post the last one on that subject... at least for a while.

Like you and your neighbor and your co-workers and everyone else across the country (and still in most parts of the world), I am at home. In my house. It's where I have been since March 12. That was the date that I left my place of employment with the computer from my desk, with the instruction from my supervisor to begin working from home as of the morning of the 13th. Since that day, I have ventured out of my house for approximately forty minutes each day to walk around the block with my wife. Twice, during the past seven weeks, I occupied the passenger's seat of my wife's car when we made a delivery of some grocery items to my son's house. We pulled up in front of his home. He popped outside, his face swathed in a makeshift face mask fashioned from a bandanna. He opened the rear hatch of the car and retrieved his items. We had a brief conversation with him as he stood a good seven feet away from us. Then he retreated back into his house and we started for home. We made no physical contact.

My wife is the designated "real world" liaison for me, as well as the extended family that are sequestered at her parents' house a few blocks away. She has graciously volunteered to do the shopping for both of our households in an effort to keep everyone safe. And that's our life. We do what we do and will continue to do what we will do until the concern subsides. And it will.

During this time, I have steered clear of most news broadcasts on television. I will watch a little bit of local news to get information I may need about business closures or changes in hours. Sometimes I'll wait for a weather forecast, but otherwise, I skip that news too. Most news programming has become "doom and gloom" and speculative reporting. I hate news stories that begin: "Well, what if..." That is not a helpful news story. That is the basis for a Marvel comic book.

Mostly what I see on the news is complaints. Complaints from Mrs. and Mrs. Average American who have been inconvenienced by a deadly virus. I understand that staying confined to your house is difficult, but considering that death may be the alternative, I don't see it as that terrible. I've heard people complaining that they can't go to a concert or a ball game or the movies or a restaurant. They complain about having to work from home. They complain about Zoom online meetings. They complain that the supermarket doesn't have that bread that they like. They complain that they can't have a barbecue in their backyard.... although some people complain about it then defiantly have a barbecue anyway.

Really? Really!?!

Thousands and thousands of people work from home every day. Some people have lost those jobs that required them to work from home (myself included). You are being asked to honor these precautions for your own good, for your own safety and well being. Yes, some people need to be guided in this manner. They need to be told how to be safe because a lot of people have no common sense. These people are the reason that chainsaws come with warning labels that caution against grabbing the blade while it's moving.

The ones I find the most upsetting are the heavily-armed angry mobs flocking to the state capital buildings (my own state included) and screaming about being inconvenienced. They don't want the government telling them what to do. (They have no problem with a big, invisible, omniscient being who lives up in the sky telling them what to do, but that's a story for another blog post.) Is it really that difficult to stay home to avoid dying? Is that really a lot to ask?  Are your rights really being compromised?  Y'know, if you die, you'll have no rights at all. If you die, you won't have to worry about staying home or not being able to golf or get a haircut or social distancing. If you die, you'll be six feet away from everybody. Permanently. 

To date, two hundred and forty-thousand people have died as a result of this pandemic. Quit complaining. It's selfish. May I suggest that you suck it up. Stay home. Wash your hands. Shut up. And stop being a cry baby. 

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

behind the mask

I am writing this in the middle of my fifth week of "working from home" as a result of precautions being taken to "flatten the curve"* of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, due to the hands-on nature of my job, there is not a lot of work for me to do at home. I have been on "stand-by" for five weeks. Two weeks ago, I did a reworking of a layout that took me all of an hour. Otherwise I have wandered around the confines of my home during most of this time, going downstairs to the kitchen. Upstairs to the den. Over to the bedroom. Back to the den. Back down to the kitchen. I'm starting to realize that my house isn't as big as I thought it was.

My only respite from "workday" boredom is an afternoon walk with my wife. Mrs. Pincus normally works from home, maintaining her eBay business from a home office on the third floor of our house. (Yeah, I go up there, too... sometimes.) Every afternoon, we set out for a stroll around the block for a little fresh air and exercise. We have been doing this for over a year. My previous job allowed me to be home by 4:30 in the afternoon, but circumstances of my current job — which is an hour's commute — leaves Mrs. P to traverse the sidewalks of Elkins Park alone. I have only been able to join her on weekends — until the majority of the nation's workforce was sent home in the middle of March. Now, I accompany her daily and will do so for as long as this home quarantine lasts.

Rules, suggestions, guidelines and mandates have changed regularly throughout the course of this decidedly uncertain situation. The governor of Pennsylvania, who, like a select number of other state governors, has assumed a position of reassuring authority and calm out of necessity. Regular briefings on current state policy are broadcast on local television and on the state's website offering pertinent information to help and guide the residents of my state through this mess. As would be expected, things change. What was once accepted policy could do a complete one-eighty a day later. Just last week, it was strongly recommended that face masks be worn by all Pennsylvania residents when leaving the house, after initially being told the contrary. Instructions on how to fashion a suitable face mask out of a bandanna are readily available all over the internet. My wife, who has been self-designated as the liaison to the outside world, does the shopping, prescription pick-ups, banking and running of small errands for me and her parents. She is the sole representative of the extended Pincus clan that leaves the house to venture further than the perimeter blocks. Before each trip, she puts a colorful bandanna in place, secured with elastic hair ties encircling each ear. When she returns home, she carefully removes the cloth and drops it in a laundry basket in the basement (yeah, I walk those steps sometimes, too) for later cleaning. Then she proceeds to thoroughly was her hands, humming "Happy Birthday" or what lyrics she can remember from the theme to "The Nanny" as presented in a recent YouTube video featuring Fran Drescher. When we go out walking, I wear one, too.

Since this most recent mandate regarding the wearing of face masks, I am surprised by the amount of people we pass on our walks — from a socially acceptable distance of six feet — that are not wearing them. In reality, I see more people not wearing a mask or some sort of facial covering than those who are. I also see a lot of people not practicing "social distancing" (another of those phrases*), stopping to talk to a neighbor and standing close enough to grab an arm or touch a shoulder. We see folks walking dogs, passing other folks walking dogs, stopping to converse while their pets sniff each others asses — yep! their owners are that close. What is wrong with these people? Oh wait.... I know! We live in a time of "The rules don't apply to me." I know we all hear the same warnings, it's just some people think those warnings are for everyone else. Other people have to follow those rules. They can't possibly mean me! After all, I'm me! My wife tells me she sees the same thing in the supermarket. She has witnessed people closing up the temporary, but clearly-marked, six-foot delineations put on the floor. She has had people reach right across the bridge of her nose to get an item on a shelf. A guy even picked up a pair of sunglasses my wife had dropped, despite her loud pleas of "Please don't touch them," his ungloved hand continuing to wrap around the lenses. Oh, right!  Sorry! You can touch them! I didn't realize it was you!

Look, I don't know how long this pandemic will last and how long we will have to maintain this cautious existence. No one does. I just keep envisioning a post-apocalyptic world as depicted in so many movies. Sinewy hollow-faced men and women roaming the streets in ragged clothes with an appropriated rifle strapped to their backs, collecting scavenged scraps of survival from steaming, picked-over spoils, strewn across the decimated landscape. It's a worrisome image that I hope I never see.

But — goddammit! — those men and women better be wearing masks and keeping their distance.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

* If I may stray from my point for just a second (as I often do), there are certain words and phrases that I have come to loathe as specific hot-button topics trend in the news. Media outlets tend to stick these words and phrases into every report, no matter how applicable it is to the current hot story. Over the years, the constant repetition of words like "Iraqi" during the days of Operation: Desert Storm and "Lewinsky" during the infamous Clinton scandal drove me crazy! More recently, "quid pro quo" was quickly replaced by the current "flatten the curve" — a phrase that is slowly losing its meaning as it is repeated over and over again on a daily basis and repeated by people who just heard it repeated on a news broadcast.