Remember when you could make an appointment at the doctor online or on the phone and just show up for your appointment. Now we have to pre-register before we show up to our appointment, verify we have no symptoms of current said pandemic scare. Remember when we could walk in the doctors office once we arrived? Now we wait in the parking lot and text HERE to a faceless administrator, and then wait for the code word to enter the building. This is an honor system that banks on the fact that we are honest and have no symptoms, what about the asymptomatic people? How are we protected from them and ourselves? Because now all we do is give our code word “water bottle” and we get access in. No temperature check, just make sure I have my mask on and we’re in. We touch nothing that doesn’t need to be touched, hand sanitizer stations everywhere. This is the new normal. Which is a phrase, in itself, that has us all fatigued of saying.
This applies to hair appointments, mask required, temperature check done and sit and get your hair did. Grocery store, where a mask, stand 6 feet apart, don’t put your stuff on the conveyer belt till the person has paid and left the pay station. Get home take out your limited supply of santiziing wipes and clean all products of any potential germ, microbe, deadly disease. New normal. What is normal about any of this, does normal just mean, this is what we do now. I am sure much of what I have been doing now, that I call normal, was a product of a changed system way before my time.
I remember when you didn’t have to put everything through security system at the airport, I could keep my shoes on and not practically undress before getting through the gate. Remember when your friends could wait with you at the gate, or you could see your grandma come out of the plane. You didn’t have to show your ID multiple times before getting on a plane. This was just one of the many changes after September 11, 2001.
I have yet to fly during these uncertain pandemic times, I’m sure that’s a whole other level of change. When will we feel safe to travel? I have friends taking trains across the country, booking their own cabin, own bathroom, staying inside there box for 3 days, food delivered, wearing full on hazmat gear to protect themselves from said disease. This is normal.
Attempting documenting these changes so when I look back I can remember what it was like. Not that I long for the past, that would be tantamont to the slaves who left Egypt and longing for the good food the left behind, forgetting all the pain and suffering they had experience. This is a look back and reflect and move forward with a changed lifestyle. Great quote I heard this week “maintain my life, not my lifestyle.”
Oh yeah and the colors of the world have changed, its Fall up here in the Hudson Valley. Appreciate the blessings and not the maledictions. I’m full of bible references today.
