There will be a day, not too far in the future, when we will look back on the year of the pandemic and say things like:
- “I still can’t believe I wore a mask all day.”
- “Remember when kindergarten teachers were trying to teach letter sounds to students via Zoom?”
- “Photos of classrooms from those pandemic days – with desks evenly spaced out and shielded with plexiglass – look like a George Orwell-inspired nightmare.”
- “It’s still hard to believe how many stupid Americans didn’t wear masks and socially distance during the pandemic because they obeyed a petulant man-child and his merry band of idiot sycophants instead of listening to doctors, scientists, and public health experts. Did you know that more than 75% of elected officials who contracted COVID-19 during the pandemic, including the man-child himself, were Republican?”
- “It’s true. The President of the United States proposed on national television that Americans might inject bleach to kill the virus. He also said it would be gone by April. Promised it would go away with the heat. Assured us that there would be no second wave of infection despite constant and repeated warnings from experts. I know. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. Even worse, the President knew about the dangers of the disease, including that it was airborne, way back in February of 2019 but purposefully downplayed the truth, resulting in the needless death of tens of thousands of Americans.”
There will be a day when all of this seems almost impossible to believe. A gratefully distant memory.
Don’t believe me? Many of us are already doing this to some degree:
- “Remember those crazy days of washing and quarantining our groceries in the garage?”
- “I can’t believe that for a couple months, one of my primary concerns was running out of toilet paper, meat, and Lysol.”
- “Back in March of 2019, as I was riding my bike through the center of Newington, I saw two deer strolling down Main Street, passing through the busiest intersection in town without a care in the world. I know I saw it, but I still can’t believe it.”
Strange, distant memories of a world gone upside down.
Then there will be this:
The Flaming Lips in concert.
The self-described “space bubble” has long been a hallmark of frontman Wayne Coyne’s stage show, but back in October, The Flaming Lips provided space bubbles to 100 of their fans as well in order to perform a four song concert and shoot a music video for the release of their new album, Assassins of Youth.
Apparently you can breathe for up to two hours in one of those bubbles, though the sound is somewhat muffled and if you need to use the restroom, you’re out of luck.
Of all the strange images from the pandemic so far, this might be the strangest.
