This morning, I said I wasn’t going to write about this. And then I pulled into the parking lot.
Yikes, I thought to myself. What on earth is going on? The half-empty parking lot I had been in a mere 2.5 hours ago was now packed. Every single parking space filled with a car. Several dozen more cars looping, waiting for a spot. Baffled, and frankly grateful I didn’t actually need a space, I pulled over and parked in front of the auto shop. “Of course,” I said, looking up. “There’s a grocery store over there.” This morning, I said I wasn’t going to write about this. And then I saw the line. A line, easily 40 people long, stretched along the front of the building. Each person had a shopping cart. And then it hit me - these carts were empty. This was the line just to get into the grocery store. This morning, I said I wasn’t going to write about this. And then I drove past the entrance to the store. Completely baffled by how long this line was, I wondered how it was they were waiting to get in. Why not just walk in? Did that mean there was literally a line snaking through the store? One giant single-file line from the entrance, through the aisles, to the registers, and then back out the door? I craned my neck and saw the answer: a police officer. Standing in the vestibule between the two doors was a police officer, donning a mask. If this isn’t the stuff movies is made of… This morning, I said I wasn’t going to write about this. And then I couldn’t get it out of my head. How did we end up here? To a place where individuals hoard toilet paper and hand sanitizer? When did people, in the face of a directive to wash our hands, to stay home as much as possible, and to practice social distancing, start to interpret that as an all-call to go buy groceries for 2 months? How does standing in a line 40 people deep keep you any distance from anyone? This morning, I said I wasn’t going to write about this. And then I realized the panicked masses aren’t listening. The goal of social distancing is not to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. The goal is to slow it down, to flatten the curve (how high we peak), so that we don’t overload a health system that isn’t prepared to handle an exponential influx of patients. But this only works if people actually practice social distancing. I worry that the line today is a small representation of what our hospitals will look like over the course of the next month, because as a society we are not using our common sense. This morning, I said I wasn’t going to write about this. But tonight, it’s the only thing on my mind.
7 Comments
Adrienne Gillespie
3/14/2020 07:12:33 pm
It is crazy, isn't it! It all feels like some dystopian movie. I hope writing about it has been therapeutic.
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3/14/2020 07:20:55 pm
Wow! Sheer craziness! I love your refrain and the structure of the post...it truly captures that sense of disbelief. I wasn't gong to write about this. But this is what we are all thinking about.
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3/14/2020 07:25:46 pm
I'm in absolute agreement. Well said. I loved the detail and repetition. I haven't seen lines, but I have seen empty shelves. Be well.
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Cassie
3/14/2020 07:26:11 pm
It's hard not to write or talk about this. It seems to be the topic of conversation I hear no matter what I am doing or where I am. Everyone has their own opinion. I am just hoping we can be smart and help our communities out by doing the right thing right now.
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Eugenia Kouts
3/14/2020 09:12:39 pm
Wonderful writing during a crazy time! I agree about people not quite understanding that hoarding is not the solution, but I think people don’t know what to do with this unprecedented directive, so panicked hoarding must bring them some comfort!
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3/14/2020 09:18:54 pm
It does seem to be an impossible topic to avoid and I think the panic feeling you so aptly describe with those queues of people is absolutely not helping anything. I am going to continue to believe it will be resolved more quickly than people expected.
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3/16/2020 12:13:31 pm
I get how it looks like hoarding that people stock up for self-isolating...thinking the grocery stores may not be open in two weeks when this gets really bad.
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