Day 37
Lately my dreams have all been about big groups of people--family reunions, public pools, vacations en masse, that sort of thing. They feature people talking loud, being frenetic, doing the things big groups of people do. In the golden days, if I'd told you about a dream like that, I'd have been describing a nightmare. Now I grasp at those dreams, trying to make them last. In particular I've been having "Let's meet down at the pub" dreams. The pubs in my dreams are big and crowded, and unlike any place I've ever gone on the regular, or would have wanted to go.
I wonder how long it will be before big loud groups are a thing for me again. I tend to assume that, at first, we'll be given the green light to go out for individual activities, with encouragement to wear masks and keep our distance. Maybe we'll experiment with intimate gatherings. But how long before the sane crowd goes again to a show at Mississippi Studios, where everybody stands, jostles each other, gently puts a hand on a stranger's shoulder while they navigate the room.
A year from now? Years?
Maybe we could do it sooner, with the right protective measures. They could hand out scrubs and face masks at the door. Or we'd bring our own HEPA breathing apparatus. To be extra safe, those inflatable suits they wear in epidemic movies.
Wait a minute. We're in an epidemic! So where are the suits? You know the ones I mean, yellow, like a cross between a space suit and the dancing tube at the car dealership? Hollywood promised me, if we had an epidemic, we'd wrap everything in plastic and put on futuristic filtration suits. What are we doing at our sewing machines, making cloth face masks? We've got bigger fish to fry. We have bubbly Marshmallow Man suits to manufacture.
As oddly-comforting as it is to see people in masks, think how much better we'll feel when we're all hermetically sealed in vinyl. We'll be free to go out, wherever we want. We could hug each other again, however much we'd look like sumo wrestlers. We could go to the movies, once they make the seats a little bigger. We could go to baseball games, to watch the pros drag their regulation carbon-fiber oxygen tanks from base to base.
If we make it a national priority, we can be out there living life the day after tomorrow.
I'll meet you down at the pub. We'll struggle up onto our bar stools, say a toast for absent friends, raise our pints and... ok, as I think about it, the pub will have to wait.
We'll meet at the pool instead. We can float together, imagining what the water must feel like. Meet me at the deep end. I'll be the one in the yellow suit.
