Runaround

This post will be one take, stream of consciousness, because I just got back from picking up take-out and...

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!

The Florida Panhandle had a massive Hurricane tear through less than a month ago (Sally) and just dodged another (Delta) but both times we were on the eastern half of the storm so it was rainy and windy and BAD. Debris litters the roads even today as I drove around. (Conversely, the western half is surreal in how serene the weather can be. Michael was a strong Category 4 Hurricane when it ripped up the Panhandle east of us less than a hundred miles away but the local weather provided the rain and wind of an above average storm along the Emerald Coast.) There are still downed trees impacting traffic. We have new leaks showing up in the roof. Life is not back to normal from Hurricane Season yet, and the season doesn't end for another month!

Oh, and does anyone remember the pandemic? Because nobody around here acts like it!

Florida didn't release Covid-19 case numbers and everyone just shrugged! The governor wants bars and restaurants fully open despite the fact that aerosolized coronavirus is an easy way to spread the disease if you spend lots of time indoors without wearing a mask.

It blows my fucking mind that this nation has been perpetually TWO WEEKS away from containing the pandemic, clamping down on community spread, locating the cases and then quarantining the possible infections through rigorous contact tracing.

But no, we get none of that. We're shutting down testing sites. Few local governments are mandating that we wear masks when in public. (I tried to find a definitive list but the only jurisdiction mandating masks that I could locate is City of Pensacola. Counties and other local municipalities don't seem to care.) The president is acting like he single-handedly inhaled every last infected droplet and Regeneronned the disease into oblivion.

So today, I made four stops:

1. Pick up a special order an my FLGS
2. Pick up essentials (shampoo, detergent, etc) at Target
3. Order take-out from my favorite Indian Restaurant
4. Drive-thru Wendy's for the son who wants a burger

How did that go?

Pick up a special order an my FLGS

I have been trying to encourage local businesses to stay in business. I'm fortunate enough to have a job and the ability to work from home. I am incredibly insulated from the virus.

In the #BeforeTimes, I played Keyforge competitively. As in "travelling to different states to fight for the top spots and a chance to go to the World Finals" competitively. (I did not earn a trip to the World Finals in May and am glad of that, obviously.) I also ran local demonstrations to encourage new players to discover the game and join in tournaments. (It's like YuGiOh but the rules are better defined and the game play is more contemplative and requires a lot of deliberate strategy. You can be too cautious and lose. You can be too audacious and also lose. Be like water and your opponent will fall.) But since the virus is spreading without let or hindrance across this country, I have not been to the local game stores to run demo games or tournaments for months. (I had hoped to run an April Fool's Themed Reversal Tournament but yeah, not happening. Very little I planned this year happened.) 

So I get there as the store opens to avoid crowds. But neither the owner nor the other customer inside was wearing a mask, and the owner was coughing pretty noticably. (Both were white guys since gaming is still dominated by white guys, even if women and minorities are making some of the most incredible contributions recently.) If I get Covid because I picked up some games, then that will truly be the stupidest consequence from living in this stupidest state during this stupidest timeline. Because I'm connected now to the coughing proprietor who is connected to every coughing wargammer and coughing roleplayer that has loitered playfully in his store for hours on end any time in the last two weeks since the governor has decided that Covid is over.

I am so fucking dead.

But that's a small business. Surely things will be better at a major company with deep pockets hoping to avoid the liability minefield that is this preventable pandemic.

Pick up essentials (shampoo, detergent, etc) at Target

I didn't go to my usual Target. The Indian Restaurant I enjoy is pretty far away, so visiting the Target near Cordova Mall made more sense.

OR SO YOU'D THINK!

The roads to Target were packed by drivers in such inordinate haste. I ended up going out of my way, skipping a shortcut down Tippin and also driving through the parking lot of Cordova Mall to avoid insane drivers that were speeding up and weaving thoughout traffic and braking unexpectedly and turning without signalling. Even trying to park, cars were zipping in and out and backing nearly into me and pedestrians darting between cars convinced that I would both notice them and not flatten them. Upon arriving I sat in the car just staring forward, not convinced that I should leave the safety of an aluminium frame and specially engineered crumple zones, but I left it anyhow.

In the parking lot, I spotted one departing patron not wearing a mask outside, no mask in hand, and no sign of having recently removed a mask. Meanwhile I've been masking so consistently that my right cheek has a patch of skin that has been rubbed so raw that it bleeds. But maybe I just didn't spot their mask. There's still a pandemic, and surely everyone inside is masked. It's dangerous.

There were so many maskless people inside that I lost count. A black guy and his white girlfriend immediately inside the door heading to the restrooms. An unmasked white father with his masked wife (also white) and two masked daughters not yet in their teens. The heavily mascara'd women with light brown skin and a red shoppping cart looking at furniture in the Home Section. After that, I don't even remember the details of the naked faces, just where they were. Two people near the groceries. One more person near the greeting cards. A person looking at razor blades. (At least the young black guy with the thick curly hair looking at deodorants has a mask on. Nice cloth mask, not the surgical type. He wanted to know if I worked there. I'm guessing it was my constant look of horror and disbelief.) But nobody working there (who WERE all masked, thankfully) were asking patrons to mask up. Have they been worn down by the uncourteous entitlement of patrons? Is that Venn diagram sliver or apathy and entitlement going to kill them? Do they already know that terrifying fact deep in their bones?

I was so unsettled that I forgot to look through the Toy Section for Clearance Priced LEGO Sets. I NEVER forget to look for Clearance Priced LEGO Sets. (I'm still pissed about that missed opportunity.)

I did get everything else on my list, but it was not easy between ALSO juggling my bewilderment and keeping a running tally of the unmasked shoppers (which I failed). I even got more than I intended, since Target had a promotion where buying 4 beauty products earned you a $5 Gift Card. I only needed ONE shampoo. I bought FOUR of the same item to qualify for the deal. I am an obedient consumer whore.

I honestly hope I don't die before running out of that shampoo.

Even as I was checking out, I still had to endure my anguish in silence. A lady in her fifties with recently permed hair and hints of either pale pink or peach color in her grey coiffure AND NO MASK got behind me in line. Not six feet away. At least she was pushing a cart so there was that space. But this crisis is not over yet, people. Two weeks from now, this lack of foresight and imagination might prove fatal.

Order take-out from my favorite Indian Restaurant

More driving, but this jaunt was a simple path on one road, straight through several lights and then a right turn onto W Street and a right turn into the shopping center. How hard could that be?

Oh My Fudgy Goodness! What the hell has gotten into people? More erratic lane shifting, more people going extra slow in front of me while people behind me are in an unexplained frenetic rush. This time I stayed in the right lane, did not pass around anyone and just patiently tried to get to the restaurant without an accident or incident.

I succeeded. Hooray for small victories.

But pulling up to the restaurant, I was convinced that the place was closed. There was only one car parked in front. The entire strip mall looked deserted.

Which scared me. I had only found this establishment in February of this year. I have been able to eat there TWICE and loved the food. Please PLEASE don't let Covid take away yet another pleasant experience.

But the glowing sign said, "OPEN" and I'm the generally credulous type so I went in.

Only the brown skinned guy in a mask behind the register. Not another customer.

I ordered naan and samosa and lamb korma and he was nice and gave me a 10% discount and I overtipped and then I noticed the refrigerated drinks and asked to buy one while I waited and he gave it to me for free and then I sat outside the restaurant until the food was ready. It was a pleasant human interaction of the sort I have missed deep within my soul. I cannot justify going to church in person. (Don't even ASK about Communion.) I can't hang out with strangers to enjoy board games or TTRPGs for hours across a table. I want people to let me know that we will be okay. I want to let other people know that we will be okay. But the incompetence at the most fundamental layers of society has stolen that assurance from everyone except the obscenely wealthy or the grotesquely powerful.

Seriously, there's a list of prominent people who have died from Covid-19. Some were rich. A handful were powerful. A few were even white. Nobody on that list was all three.

Spoiler alert: the food gets home safely and was delicious.

Drive-thru Wendy's for the son who wants a burger

To keep the virus from spreading, I avoid leaving the house if possible. Thusly, any trips outside are deliberate and well considered in advance. I had planned this trip out so carefully. Mostly right turns in a big circle through central Escambia County: Nine Mile to Davis to Creighton (to Tippin) to Ninth to Bayou to W Street to US-29 to Nine Mile to home. The hot food picked up last, the sundries first, everything in its place. So now I turn right onto W Street going north and stop at the Wendy's on US-29.

Except getting behind a slow church bus in the right lane. But I know I'm turning right into Wendy's soon, so I stay behind it. But again the people in my rear view mirror are in a hurry and the bus stops suddenly, even though I'm sure they drive this route EVERY Sunday. My sudden application of the brakes sends the half-full bottle of unsweetened tea flying but I hold the food in place and the car behind me doesn't hit my wife's sedan.

The Wendy's is deserted. Nobody in the parking lot, only me in the drive thru. I order, get a bag of burgers quickly from a masked employee (that smelled REALLY good) and pull out into the nightmarish traffic that is still in an unexplained rush. Why are the roads packed but the stores (except for Target) so vacant?

I had not been to this section of Escambia County since Hurricane Sally. Huge trees were down everywhere, some still sticking slightly into the road. Tarps on roofs, signs blown away, fences flattened. We are beset on so many sides today and we need each other more than ever, which makes the insular "us versus them" rhetoric from the ruling party and state media seem even more ludicrous. A Tom Thumb on W Street, just south of the Escambia County Emergency Management Control Center, had lost every part of its facade and showed the slats and panels that made up the actual building. I spotted a tree a little farther north where the top was shorn off roughly and the remaining trunk split in two and the halves curving around each other like DNA strands, clear evidence of a powerful tornado. We are trapped in a disaster that was not manmade but has been exacerbated by our actions (or lack thereof).

And we are definitely exacerbating it. The Chipolte Restaurant near my house was overwhelmed with partrons. People parking on the soggy grass kicking up huge muddy divots because there are no more legitimate parking spaces. Every table full, nobody wearing masks. We are not safe yet. I would like this catastrophe to end but it's not a wish to Santa Claus that someone else will fulfill. We have to do the work ourselves.

That's really all I have to say. While writing this blog entry over the last four hours, the delicious food has been consumed, the sun has set. I'm a little less mad about how selfish people are being, but only a little.

I don't want to die from a stranger's selfishness.