Last laugh
Ithink we’ll all agree the world moved for us, perhaps not quite as we were used to, nor expecting, but nevertheless with missionary zeal, when news first broke of the looming viral pandemic in early 2020. It didn’t take long for the punsters to churn out the memes and tropes wondering exactly what you and me were doing to keep occupied during the long, dog-day afternoons of house arrest. The optimists plumped for shagging. The pessimists plumped for divorce. Turns out both were right. According to one United Nations study, there were an unplanned extra 7 million pregnancies due to lockdown. These will come to be known as the Coronials. The first tribe in history to be all and only first-time children.
To put this in perspective, the UN says that in any normal year, 350 000 pregnancies are “made” each day. That’s 250 per minute. So an extra 7 million pregnancies in nine weeks translates to around 111 000 extra pregnancies a day. Considering that most fertility clinics advise couples trying for a baby to expect to wait up to a year before falling pregnant – and that is shagging every other day – you see immediately that is an astronomical amount of sex that has been, ahem, going down. Bonobo monkeys have apparently sent an envoy to Guinness World Records, demanding to know what’s going on, and if they’re still the horniest creatures on the planet. It’s things like this – pure maths – that keep me occupied as I stand in the Woolies queue behind 50 people trying fervently not to imagine, or wonder or speculate. Or sniff. Never mind last summer, I know what you did last Tuesday.
Of course, what brings me down to earth with a bump, is the other side of the coin. You see, divorce enquiries went up by 42 percent, according to another study, with the new enquiry rate peaking to around 75 percent during some of the lockdown weeks. Go figure. Humanity at its best and worst. When we’re not fighting, we’re … well, precisely.
It’s to be expected. Those tiny cracks that you thought you could paper over in the living room of your marriage? Turns out they were hiding structural defects exacerbated by the stress of house arrest. The one divorce lawyer I rang up in Cape Town told me – once he had shushed the sounds of corks popping in the background – that January is usually divorce month in South Africa. Something to do with financial pressures, as well as new spouses losing the frikkin’ plot over being bought a vacuum cleaner for Christmas. But this year, it increasingly looked like May and June would see the highest rate of separations.
So it was with baited breath and a fluttering heart that I read one agony aunt column in a daily newspaper from a new bride in Cape Town who had been dreading going into lockdown. She had realised her brand spanking new man was still in love with his ex, and that he had been chatting to a lawyer. He had told her that the dreaded documents were being drawn up. Hurt, confused and, it turns out, nauseous in the mornings, this woman all but panicked when she realised her ma-in-law would be staying with them for the entire lockdown. And then a little lockdown miracle happened. The spark reignited. No chance for cathartic walks on the beach. No opportunity to vent their anger at the gym. Just the enforced chance to watch again each other’s tiny patterns, which is what made most of us fall in love with our soul mate in the first place. They fell in love again. In the lounge. The kitchen. The bedroom. The garden. That guy’s mother must have been made of stern stuff.