A SHOT IN THE DARK

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-18-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     With a little bit of pre-existing asthma I was able to schedule a coronavirus vaccination for 11:00 at night at the Javits Center in Manhattan, and I was so happy I could have kissed a stranger, if Governor Cuomo hadn't already beaten me to it. I wasn't sure how to dress for the vaccination. It was such a fortuitous occasion that I felt I should wear a suit and tie, but I settled on something in between that and what I usually wear in quarantine, so the compromise was: clothing. It seems like we're getting there. It feels as if soon we will be able to get together, in person, and have such a contentious argument that we storm out in a snit and never speak to each other again. I've been waiting a whole year for this day.

     The Javits Center is a huge convention space, and the whole proceedings had the distinct flavor of being at the airport. There were people dressed in National Guard uniforms, which made me nervous that we might be hijacked. But they were very nice, very calm and very efficient, moving my wife and I from one side of the floor to the other, where we followed a maze of ribbon barriers, different colored tape on the floor, and numbered signs to get us where we needed to go, which looked remarkably like where we started. I began to feel like that one red canvas bag on the luggage carousel, the one that has been there since the Kennedy administration, going around and around waving at you while you're waiting for your own suitcase to appear.

     Centrifugal force threw us off the line in front of a panel of nurses, who were running a quiz show, and if you answered the questions correctly, you got to move on. "Are you feeling sick today?" One asked. I said, "No, my hair always looks like that." "Do you have any underlying conditions?" "No, they're lying right there on the top." "What is your race?" "I am an Earthling." "Are you pregnant?" "No, but the night is young." "Are you an essential worker?" "I work for television- is there anything more essential than that right now?" "Do you pass out after shots?" "Only if I have more than eight of them." And so forth. We got our inoculations, and the nurses had us sit for a while to make sure we didn't have an abnormal reaction. Once they realized that my reaction was as normal as it was going to get, they not only let us go but encouraged it.

     The CDC published a list of things you still can't do after receiving your vaccine. I found, for instance, that after receiving the vaccine I still could not play the piano. What you CAN do is visit your grandchildren, even if they are not vaccinated, as long as they are not exhibiting any signs of being extremely annoying. If you don't have grandchildren, the CDC has said that it is perfectly okay to visit theirs.

     I hear rumblings, and I'm not talking about my stomach right now, that there are people out there that don't want to get the coronavirus vaccine, so I'd like to have a few words with them right now. Are you afraid that it might hurt? It won't hurt nearly as much as me hitting you over the head with a ball peen hammer to knock some sense into you. Are you afraid that it doesn't have decades of track record for you to pore through the data and study? Come on now, you weren't really going to do that anyway, you were going to trust the same authoritative bodies that told you that Skittles were safe to eat. Maybe you've been gleaning your science from the QAnon 6:00 News and you now believe that the "vaccine gives you the virus?" Listen: you probably have a family doctor that you've trusted for years. I'll make you a deal: I won't make fun of you anymore if you promise to ask your doctor what he or she thinks you should do, and then do it.

     I'm ready to get back to real life, a life where people can once again see that I have a pimple on my chin. I've already cancelled my appearance on the masked singer and the masked dancer. And I still might kiss a stranger, so do yourself a favor and don't be too strange.