The Day it All Changed (COVID-19 Day 1)

March 12, 2020.

Yesterday, it didn’t matter very much. I took it seriously, washed my hands, did the things, but I’m old enough to remember SARS, Y2K, and AIDS. Ah. Yeah, we should have paid more attention to that one. The bar band jokes that we all laughed at and had another Guinness – well, we didn’t know. But SARS didn’t destroy the world, and Y2K didn’t even happen.

I’m not given to panic (except about all the relatively unimportant things in life, but that’s anxiety for you), so the reports coming out of Italy, for instance, only caused me to get cleaner and be more careful.

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I had moments of worry about my son, already dealing with a chronic sinus infection and now dealing with chronic exhaustion from 14-hour days (and longer) on a movie crew where deadlines and money rule all, and social distance doesn’t exist. But I always have moments of worry about my son. That’s anxiety for you.

It wasn’t until the notices started arriving in my inbox and the posters started going up today that it suddenly began to matter. There is, for instance, the slow realization of how many things we touch every day.

One of the sanitizers, the one we all prefer because it has fewer potentially harmful ingredients and it smells like peppermint, has no pump attachment. You pick up the bottle, take off the broken cap, squeeze into your hand. You clean your hands – and then you pick up the dirty bottle with your clean hands and put it back together. Easy enough to fix – put the bottle back together before you spread the disinfectant over your hands. But it wasn’t until today, that any of us noticed our foolishness.

We touch computer keyboards, books, desktops, craft supplies, washroom keys, pens, mouse, scanner, computer monitor, binders, drawer handles, door handles, coffee cup handles, food. So there is the path to utter disintegration.

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Wait – don’t pick up that muffin. You just held your coffeecup with that hand! Yes, you washed it out. But did you thoroughly scrub the outside? Can you remember if you touched anything else after washing it? The kettle? Did you scrub the bejeebers out of the kettle handle? Cough and sneeze into your arm? And then what? How do you disinfect your sweater sleeve? What happens when you pick up an armload of files, cradle them into your germ-infested elbow? How far does this go???

The world is already going crazy. Toilet paper! Cats everywhere are delightedly plotting access, but really? I don’t want to join the panick.

@marneejill https://www.flickr.com/photos/rosiejuliet/40010021845

I understood how far I had plummetted (not as far as the Toronto stock market, not yet) when my friend texted me to go to the play with her. Women of the Fur Trade, sold out, excellent, and my friend is one who is always comfortable to be with.

Yet – I hesitated, and not just because I tore some hip muscle or other on the weekend and it’s still hard to sit! (That would be another forthcoming story. Warm-up before yoga, folks!) I thought about people packed together in the theatre, no windows, unsanitized seats and armrests, coughs.

This is still March 12, in frozen, far-away Winnipeg. Nothing is closed yet, there are only 3 cases, and, well, SARS, our go-to fairy story about how everything turns out just fine. This will blow over, right? And the play is very good. Just yesterday, the interwebs were full of jokes about how even Covid-19 doesn’t want to come all the way to wasteland Winterpeg.

So, I went to the play. It is as good as they said it would be. I try to not think – too much – about all the people around me, but no one is coughing. Except one of the actors.

That turns out to be part of the plot, but she peers at us quizzically, “Nothing, I’m fine. Nothing to do with any of you.” The other actors stay in character and still manage to look nonplussed, “Oops, sorry. Nothing to do with the plot either!” We laugh and settle in to enjoy.

Later that night, I worry, a little bit, about the reason I had the opportunity to go to the play: my friend’s husband woke up with a cold. But I know them well. If they say it’s a cold, then it’s a cold. It’s not the coronavirus, right?

Oh, I see. Hello, anxiety. You must really like me. Please go away, k?

[Featured Image Credit: Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA]