Three Stories to Make Your Head Feel Different

GENDER REVEAL PARTY

- DOUGLAS COUPLAND

I’m not sure if it was ultimately a good thing, but here’s how it went down.

The four of us had been isolating for six weeks and were going squirrelly like everyone else. Time dragged and then it magically sped up and then it dragged again. We basically abandoned the kids to play their brainless video games while Christian and I drank way too much. When we weren’t drinking, I made lumpy sourdough baguettes and Christian locked himself in his workshop in the basement, a sort of isolation within isolation. Families aren’t meant to spend so much time together. They really aren’t.

Are we nice people? Somewhat. We’re not churchy or squeaky clean. We cared enough about each other at least to try to make it work. We didn’t think we had any big issues to deal with, at least. My friend has a drug-addicted son who lasted about four days in lockdown before he took off. He slithered home a couple of weeks later, coughing and feverish, and of course, his family took him in, and soon everyone was sick. What were they thinking? They should have locked him outside and thrown rocks at him from the windows. Instead, he got a hug and a houseful of people to infect.

Maybe, if the virus had actually turned people into zombies, we could have seen the real impact. It would have made isolating feel a lot more purposeful if we were fighting off zombie hordes. Sometimes, the whole pandemic felt like another y2k. I knew people were dying, but for a long time, I didn’t know anyone who had. Maybe I’m retroactively justifying.