This is a pandemic rant. You will learn that I am, in fact, not really a nice person.
"Dear Friends and Family,
In the past few years, it may feel like the number of snarls have begun to fever."
If you are reading this and wondering what the hell is going on, I had just to memorialize that sentence. My brain spouted it out in a sleepy early morning state. It's somewhat verbatim. I have come up with an explanation as to what it meant, but this is simply documentation.
Odd things like this end up in my journals, and this is a "journal", so there. Do with that sentence what you wish.
Enough of the nonsense.
About three months ago, I was out and about minding my business when this interesting guy suddenly comes up to me. This happens often, by the way, since we ended up in this hacked COVID-19 existence.
Unfortunately, I am often the dictionary definition of resting-bitch-face. No other expression comes as naturally as stiff eyes, stiff mouth, and stiff forehead. It's so bad. In the past, I've often had to explain to friends that I didn't hate them when we first met—sometimes, I might have not been particularly moved, but it wasn't...dislike. Looking approachable just takes a little effort from my features.
Now, I wouldn't say I'm totally unapproachable. I think I'm nice and...stuff, I'd just usually rather not, especially at a mall. I hate malls.
More recently, since all people can see are my eyes, I've observed a significant uptick in random people coming up to me to express their thoughts, ask if I'm single, ask for help, ask to use my phone—jesus. was this particular one something you've all been going through all along??? once or twice before masks, but every other day now???
The last two are usually perfectly fine, it's the first two that are sometimes the problem.
This is mean, but 70% of the time they're not from a source that I happily welcome. I sometimes find myself wondering why it won't end—or why it's happening. As in, what about me at that moment indicated that it was okay to take place.
Again, I'm a nice person, but please advise your dads (and dad-uncles) that actually look just like it—like, dad of person—to relax with approaching much younger people in public and just dad-ing up the whole conversation.
It mustn't be a dumpster show. I get it, you're older, and that's your chosen punchline, but the real issue is that your trusted desperate, cringefest flirtation approach is not hitting multi-generationally. It's just so desperate. You sound like you've never breathed romantic and/or sexual air just...ever. Like my pheromones are suffocating you.
I'm a nice person.
If I continuously say I'm a nice person, does it actually make me a nice person?
Back to our favorite stranger. This person comes up to me in full, "sorry, excuse me" style. He proceeds to ask what I think about the mask mandates in place throughout the country. Now, this was in the middle of April, so essentially, still the pandemic premium. I explained that I didn't particularly mind it, and so this stranger segues into vaccination. At this point, I'm stressed. I haven't dragged myself through a mall to discuss Coronavirus and vaccinations with a stranger, let alone his family's history of non-vaccinations.
Yes, he let me know he took no offense to vaccinated people, but that his family was vehemently non-participant. The guts on this man. You don't know me—this is our first conversation—and you're using this introductory time to inform me about your familial lack of vaccinations, with no context. To get some understanding, I ask him why that is: He explains that his family has historically never needed them—must be nice. Apparently, his 90-something-year-old grandfather had never received any type of vaccinations, been to any hospitals, or ingested any prescription medications. (I wish this grandson the best. Obviously, grandpa was not perusing around nasty malls talking to strangers and pulling his mask down to do so).
Our stranger eventually began to realize that this conversation was taking on very unnecessary turns for a "walk up to someone". In other words, he's starting to sound a bit pyramid scheme-ish. That's an annoying one, those pyramid schemes. Allow me my space you literal puppet.
Attempting to salvage the conversation, he let me know I should be aware of the government's agenda. Great. The first: we needed to wear masks; Now: the vaccine.
He'd found an article that he felt was very foreshadowing for the near future. This article was distributed via...*fireworks*...WhatsApp. I'm pretty sure I looked straight into this man's soul in pity at this point. If you're not familiar with WhatsApp news, it's basically Facebook news' crazed older sibling. "Bananas can help cure cancer" types of news—bananas and coffee.
So here, we have this man sharing this highly credible screenshot excerpt from Rockefeller in the 1980s—I researched it for this post, it was from 2010—which, according to him, claimed that a virus was being manufactured by the government to garner control over citizens. This virus was going to, in turn, cause a divide between ideologies—those who comply versus those who do not—and then wage mass war.
The drama of it all.
This was either a gross lack of reading comprehension on his part or Whatsapp news doing what they do best. The actual excerpt has something similar being one of four probable scenarios for our developing future, called the Lockstep Scenario. In this one, they hypothesize that, in response to a flu crisis, the government becomes more authoritarian, which works at first, but eventually results in less innovation and more citizen pushback. Simple, easily imaginable, and already existent in variations.
So, we're shocked this is the path we've chosen time and time again though? Whatever.
What I'm getting at here is that I've been through it with this pandemic—as have we all—and I'm learning more unnerving things about the human race.
I have spent months—almost a year—avoiding everyone who walks around wearing disposable gloves, especially after the calm down of initial post-quarantine anxieties. I know you are not washing those gloves with warm/hot water and soap, and I am certain you're not changing them every couple of minutes either because they're soaked internally with sweat. You're essentially evenly distributing the nastiness you've collected along the way like Christmas presents. Along with the pyramid schemers, stay away from me.
Another thing, friends, you do not, and I cannot stress that any more than I did, have to pull your mask down every time you speak if the receiver is comprehending with your mask in place. Please, I'm begging you.
I just hope I don't come out of this ɯɐɹƃolǝllɐɹɐd a worse person because I am sick of some of you.
