SOCIAL STUDIES

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (12-03-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     If I was a sociologist I'd be saying, "Wow- in these unprecedented times lie a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study a myriad of human behaviors, as the world learns how to survive and thrive while apart from one another. What can we learn from this?" I'd also be saying, "If I had stayed in school another four years, I could have become a psychologist and made $70,000 dollars more a year." One of the few good things about surviving a coronavirus pandemic is that the next time it happens, I won't have to hear the phrase, "In these unprecedented times...." Now they're precedented, and I hope we do learn a few things from them.

     For instance, what are the effects of isolation on the elderly? And before you start talking behind their back I'd like to point out that I'm more or less the elderly, too. I read in an article that grandparents are lying to their children that they've been quarantining so that they can visit their grandchildren. Then they're posting facebook selfies at the bar living it up with no mask. What good is facebook with no face? And what else have our parents been lying to us about? It wouldn't surprise me to find out that vegetables aren't that great for you after all.

     Some couples are holed up 24/7 as they work from home and have no social life anymore. Sociologists are wondering, will this result in a baby boom? Because there's no one you want to get intimate with more than somebody whom you're already with EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF THE DAY. They say "absence makes the heart grow fonder," and I say, "pandemics make the heart want to run itself over with a Subaru." I've been at this quarantine game for eight months now, and I'm even sick of myself. I never knew I had so many bad habits. I've started chewing my nails because I'm so sick of the annoying things I usually do.

     Are there any adverse effects from spending this much time with my brothers and sisters? We spend more time together as a sextet than we ever did, even when we were growing up, via Zoom meetings every other week. I would have suggested it years ago, but I wasn't sure whether "bi-weekly" meant two times a month or two times a week. So far it's been really fun to re-live every embarrassing moment of my youth once each one of them points it out, "not remembering" that the others already mentioned it. I'm trying to use the time as a group therapy session, since we all felt oppressed by my Dad at times. We had a very rough childhood, because my Dad wanted us to do chores sometimes and our homework, and never realized how unrealistic those expectations were. 

     What are the effects of watching this much "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch?" I find myself writing dialogue in my head for the cat. This cannot be healthy. Soon I will have seen every episode of every television show made before 1995. I'm waiting for more programs to be produced before 1995, because they don't make 'em like they used to. I'm working on a pilot myself, and I must say, it's diabolically clever. So far I only have one character sketched out, the character of Alexa. She's a bookish nerd girl who's always sitting in front of her laptop computer at the kitchen table. A few times an episode somebody asks really loud, "Alexa, what's the weather today?" or "Alexa, tell me a really bad joke," which sets off the Amazon Echos residing in 50 million very annoyed American homes (wow my sitcom is one of the highest rated in history! Thanks America!). Her sister's name is Siri. 

     As long as we have all this time to study things, I'd like to study why every time I turn around, somebody says they are receiving death threats. Has anyone ever died from a death threat? I've never received a death threat, because I usually don't say anything controversial, just dumb. But all I have to do is say I HATE bananas, and I'll start receiving death threats from some fringe banana supremacy group. I probably shouldn't have mentioned that I HATE bananas. I sometimes wonder how it all works: does someone call you up on the phone and say, "By the power vested in me I hereby THREATEN you. To DEATH!" I don't know about you but I have caller ID that even shows your number on my television screen. Sometimes it says "Spam?" next to the number and I have no doubt it would also say, "Possible Death Threat?" Which I would probably pick up thinking that it might be my wife. And if I don't pick up you're going to get so frustrated that you just about want to KILL me. You could send an email I guess, but that's going right to spam, too. When I clean out my spam folder a few months later I'll find out that I was death-threatened, along with my email server being shut down and a $27,800,000.00 business proposal from Chiba, Japan (which I really did receive and I'm following up on that one). You could tell me in person, I guess, but then you run the risk of me counter-death threatening you. "You dare to dost threaten THEE with death? Well, I hereby counter-threaten THOU! Or is it THY?" At which time I get to choose the weapon, and I choose beating you to the death at Scrabble. You'd better get your affairs in order.