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Everything/Nothing

My eldest kid went off to college in NYC a few weeks ago. We traveled by plane for the first time since Thanksgiving 2019.

What’s travel like in this post Covid apocalypse, Anne?

In the rows I could see from my seat, one person was not wearing his mask and another had nose holes out. There was a big thing about fines and mask wearing added to EXIT signs and what to do in a water landing speech they do in the beginning.

I’d seen a couple viral videos on Youtube in previous weeks about people getting thrown off flights for mask refusal, so I was pretty tense waiting to see what would happen.

After all the tough announcements, the stewards’ eyes glided right over the offenders, even the fully unmasked. I get it. Who wants their job to be constantly starting shit with assholes?

Once, a middle aged woman said, “Put on your mask!”

Maskless blankly stared, as if not comprehending. She stood up to press the call button, but her husband put his hand on her arm and talked her out of it. She sat down.

After that, Maskless got bolder. Instead of slipping his mask on every time an attendant came by, he made a show of eating things for a really long time so as to never have to put the mask back on.

Eventually one of the flight attendants came over and said something to him. In fact, leaned in, had a full sixty second conversation so hushed I could not hear above the roar of the engines. Maskless nodded. He put the mask on.

But then took it off again a little while later.

It was exhausting to be so angry at him. Also exhausting to do the math that if I could see two people not properly masked and I could only see about… seven passengers, how many were there that I couldn’t see, that were making the flight attendants go blind with weariness? Probably a lot.

Anyway, I was pretty stressed about it, but then the staff came by with drinks and snacks twice, and everyone took their masks off anyway to eat and drink, so what the fuck, after all the precautions it was just a big airborne cootie orgy anyway.

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Here’s some cool stuff we saw while we were there:

Someone doing a photo shoot for some pillows.

Fun fact: There was human poop in this tunnel.

God, how beautiful right? We spent three days walking Central Park and it’s amazing. Do you want more photos? Because I have more photos.

 

There were just as many people lined up to take pictures touching the face of this bull as lined up to take selfies cradling the bull’s balls. Ever seen the Wall Street bull’s balls? Of course you have! No need to add it here.

OK Fine.

My husband was mortified I took that photo. That is how much I love you.

Some stuff we ate:

We tried to eat outside mostly. Four times, we ate inside. One time we were actually carded for proof of vaccine.

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People keep asking if I miss my oldest kid.

OK, that’s a bit of a lie. I don’t talk to anyone anymore, so nobody’s asked except my mom.

I do miss her. But my other kids are also in school, and the district has decided there answer to Covid will be to email every Friday with the tally of how many students or teachers were diagnosed that week. First report out: there’s been 7 kids at the middle school (where the lower grade have kids under 12) and 3 at the high school.

So it’s hard to feel the luxury of bittersweet worry for my eldest—is she safe out there in NYC? Is she having fun, meeting friends*? Is she figuring out how to cope with all this? – because I am already wondering those things about my kids who are still in town, have already been wondering that about all of them the past two years. As the saying goes, All my fucks have been given and the earth has been salted so that no more fucks may grow here.

The night before we flew home, Ida hit NYC.

We woke up to go to the airport, but the subways were flooded, and when we asked the hotel manager if we could get a taxi, he laughed at us and sent us on our way. Plenty of other New Yorkers stopped us in the street and told us we were fools to try and get a taxi. They said it very jovially, in that stereotypical way you see in movies about New Yorkers.

We got a taxi.

We drove past burned out cars (how I wish I’d gotten a shot of that one!) and flooded cars and standing water, past closed tunnels. And after the past eighteen months, I guess nothing seems strange anymore, and we were all, fuck it.

Anyway, we made it home. Oh and you could see California burning from the air.

*Although I did ask her, half jokingly about the ratios of hotties on campus. “I don’t really know, Mom. We’re all wearing masks.”

2 thoughts on Everything/Nothing

  1. For some reason, my kid started her junior year of high school this year, but in my mind, your kids were still in diapers(!?)…congratulations on launching your first human! And I’ve heard this about people on planes. It was enough for me to make it through the West Sac Ikea today without imploding with rage. Ugh!

  2. Congrats on launching your first kiddo! May they fly high and land unscathed on the other side of the college experience.

    I hope you didn’t find the human poo in the tunnel on the bottom of your shoe. No one wants to find poo that way. Ever.

    Wishing you more masked faces than not the next time you are out and about.

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