Wave checkered flag on pandemic
Back in Chapter II, I suggested Lorne Michaels give every “Saturday Night Live” “cast member five minutes to do their thing from their home studio.”
Sorry about that.
I missed it anyway. I was too busy hiding Easter eggs and drawing maps. I found out the hard way that The Kid dyed eggs without boiling them. He also tried to make his own Peeps. So the kitchen is glazed with puddles of dye and melted marshmallows, yellow sugar and the stench of failure.
But at least I’ll get to sleep in Easter Sunday, right ... RIGHT? Sunday, March 12, 2020: “GET UP DAD.”
“Wha ...? Wait, is ‘Saturday Night Live” even over yet?”
The Kid vacuumed the candy so quickly that he’s now 93 percent chocolate. Home quarantine, wired 8-year-old. What else could go wrong?
Monday:
Tree go boom, power go out. But just as we hit bottom, we find toilet paper at Walmart. Don’t let those poseurs in the supermarkets tell you they aren’t all praying to find TP. No mask can cloak the disappointment upon their arrival at the paper aisle, which has been as deep a void as an 8-year-old’s Easter basket for the last five weeks. Maybe now I won’t be subjected to more cracks about the TP shortage saving the printed newspaper.
Stores like this need to pipe in an appropriate soundtrack during the pandemic. Not that we need a zombie dirge, but this mash of Bee Gees and Taylor Swift is too damn upbeat. If Sirius can have a “Yacht Rock” station, there must be a genre that says, “keep pace, but stay in line.” You know, like a mid-century Austrian military march or whatever they play during the wait to “Haunted Mansion” at Disney World.
Tuesday:
We remain powerless, though I have rewired the house to work off of the outlet I was able to fire up with a generator (there’s now a microwave in the sink).
While I work, my wife and The Kid take The Pup for a walk. She soon calls because they’ve encountered workers removing a tree and repairing wires. The Kid wants to help, so she summons me to usher him to safety. I race to the scene, only to discover I’m on the wrong side of where the street is blocked off. They are a few yards away in the path I can’t take and more than a mile afar in the other direction. So I turn around. I eventually figure out this was just my wife’s way of getting me to jog.
After I return to work, The Kid stops by “my office.” Remarkably, he knocks first.
“Sorry, I’m in a meeting,” I say, holding up the phone.
“Put me on, I’m good at meetings.”
Turns out he is.
Wednesday:
The Kid’s lesson plan is on the sinking of the Titanic (if you need one too, it was 108 years ago on this date).
Several years ago, I moaned about the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk promoting a Titanic exhibit by sending press kits that included an actual lump of coal recovered from the wreckage. It now strikes me that it can finally be put to appropriate show-andtell use (what, you think I’d toss a piece of the Titanic?).
Unfortunately, it may take 108 years for me to find it. Thursday:
The plush Beatles in the basement have mysteriously assumed yoga poses (I have to say, Ringo is nailing the Viparita Karani).
While washing dishes, I listen to Howard Stern interview Paul McCartney (regretfully, he does not ask about yoga). McCartney mentions something I’ve never heard him say before, that he wrote “Paperback Writer” in the form of a letter to the editor. At least it’s not another letter about national politics or Pay-As-YouThrow.
Friday:
The Kid has shifted gears to an obsession with NASCAR racing. Because what you really want when trapped in the house are the pumped-up growls of decades of races on YouTube.
In response, I’ve taken to communicating via racing flags.
Green = Get up and eat breakfast.
Blue = Yield to The Pup. Red = Imminent danger (i.e., Mom).
Black = Return to the pits (your room).
Saturday:
Checkered flag = Week V is done.