Buckle Up, Buttercup

Sometimes even as I sit down at the keyboard to start writing these things, I don't have any idea where my words are heading, which seems only fair since I assume for you that happens even more often than I care to think about. That's my way of warning you that today is one of those days.

Summer started, says the calendar, this past Saturday, though we'd had warm and dry weather for prolonged periods of time before anything officially became anything else. And between us, in light of how unsettling in so many ways that so much of Spring 2020 proved to be, I think we should be glad to be rid of it and face the next season with optimism and hope (and masks and at a proper socially distanced interval). 

Speaking of which, as a kid who always loved Halloween, and whose less than attractive facial features (and too many acquired-taste personality traits) made both masks and quarantining a preferred coping strategy from an early age, we could and should care enough about ourselves and one another to cover our faces when sharing public places, per Governor Lamont's directive back on April 20th. 

I don't mean to nag (but as the oldest child I've had a lot of practice and I'm really good at it) but watch me do it anyway: we've all encountered unmasked folks in a variety of public spaces who are behaving as if the COVID-19 threat has vanished and precautions can be relaxed if not outright ignored. 

As a life-long (so far) pessimist who is only (rarely) surprised and seldom disappointed by the shenanigans that go around here on our ant farm, I'm dismayed (but not really) that so many of us who've ignored the hands-free cell phone and distracted driving laws we had the legislature enact continue to so blithely ignore them. And the same holds true with masks and social distancing.

We've had nearly 125,000 deaths attributed nationwide to COVID-19, and are still trending at over 100 new fatalities every day, so I don't understand where this belief in personal invincibility comes from, or even more on point, why so many of us seem to think that it can't happen to us when every statistic I've seen says it most certainly can.    

Masks aren't a symbol of a political belief or ideology; they are a sign of how much we could and should care about and for one another. I'm considered to be in a high-risk for infection category and am grateful to every person who chooses to mask up when shopping, just as I hope they appreciate my efforts to do likewise perhaps for their someone special they have at home who might be at risk. 

We've viewed our lives for so long as sprints to see who could be fastest to have the best and/or the most, be it cars, houses, jobs, etc. And now, we're faced with acknowledging we are engaged in a marathon and that far too many of us, because of race, skin color, sex, sexual preference or a hundred other synthetic barriers have different starting and ending points on the path that we must run. 

We'll get through this and move forward with the continuing challenges we have as a nation of neighbors and citizens continuing to strive 'to form a more perfect union' but only when we are together and united
-bill kenny.