Walkies

Since the pickle ball and wally ball and all other sports courts are off-limits right now, I’ve taken to having “walkies” (without the dogs that the term implies…)

 

It’s nowhere near as much fun.  It has to be solo walkies these days to qualify as safe (social distancing) and it has to be where as few other people walk as possible.

 

So, for me, that means no beaches, no walking trails, none of the usual places where people go to walk.

 

Ugh!

 

It’s a real drag.  But sitting home doing nothing, or riding my stationary bike, is worse.

 

So I do walkies.

 

At least the term makes it sound like something fun.

 

I can’t get up the inclination to go for a mere “walk.” Only “walkies” gets me out the door reliably.

 

It’s a mind game. All a mind game.

 

But whatever works, right?

 

If I had a basketball I could bounce it while I walk, but I don’t… and on the streets I walk on, an errant basketball could go places where it could cause problems: ditches running with water, pastures, people’s yards, the streets (although there are very few vehicles on the streets where I walk) right now.

 

Several days ago I was walking when a heavyset guy came lumbering up behind me, jogging. I stepped sideways to let him pass, and he choked out, “Hello” but he wasn’t six feet away and I didn’t like it. I held my breath for a long time while he chugged on ahead of me, to make sure I wouldn’t breathe in the breaths he was exhaling.

 

That’s what you do when there’s a deadly virus around; you consider everybody else (even yourself) positive for it so you don’t risk spreading it…

 

Before, a lone walker might worry about stalkers or being raped or robbed. Now I worry about being breathed on or sneezed on or coughed on by someone else. I don’t let anyone get close enough to be a danger in any other way. Dying of COVID-19 would be a terrible way to go… one of the worst, I think. And since I’m 69 and in a high-risk group, I probably wouldn’t even qualify for intervention and a respirator if I did come down with it.  So naturally, I’m treating it as a very real risk. 

 

I wish Donald Trump would get with the program and send everyone home to self-isolate. But that’s asking too much of a sociopath. He likes having the power of “life over death.” He’s always considered himself a god; this crisis fits into his delusions perfectly. Take all the time in the world getting help to blue states, and send them the wrong stuff and the broken stuff and require that their governors kiss his ring.

 

I don’t know how he’s getting away with it. It takes lots of collusion, that’s for sure, lots of cult members and sociopaths to pull off something this Machiavellean.

 

Bernie in 2020.

Because only Bernie “gets” it and wants to end the mass suffering of millions of marginalized people…

and has for decades, long before COVID-19 made the suffering as clearly obvious and near universal as it is.

 

Most people are in the circumstances they’re in, aside from COVID-19, despite working hard and doing the right things.  Now that we’re all pretty much feeling the pinch and seeing what being unable to make a living looks like despite our best efforts, I would think more people would experience that crucial “AHA!” moment and start thinking about choosing leaders who care more about people than they do about political profiteering.

 

It’s an errant wish, but if this moment in our history doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will…

 

Most of us white folks have had it relatively easy by comparison. We’ve lived privileged lives, even in poverty.  No one looks at us as “the other”… the “undeserving” (except for rich white guys and the people our white supremacist society has oppressed since its inception).

 

Too few politicians jumped in to help when “only” people of color were hurting. It took a color-blind pandemic to get them to act–and then the response was anemic, and most of the largesse went to the already well off.

 

What’s it going to take to get this turned around?

A bloody revolution?

A refusal to return to work when the stay-at-home order is lifted? 

I don’t know. But all it would really take is a change of heart at the top.

But the hearts at the top are diseased, self-serving and apathetic. Most of them.

Vote them out. Get people in who will un-stack the deck against us.

 

Pay attention to VOTES, not to words.

 

Who is telling you one thing and voting the opposite way?