Social distancing is nothing new for those of us in retirement who would rather not spend time with a bunch of other people. In fact, as president of the local chapter of the International Society Of Misanthropes, I’m glad no one else is showing up to our meetings.
I’m glad neither Martha nor I are coffee addicts, thus making us easily capable of surviving the eventual closure of every Starbucks.
When we heard Monday afternoon that the St. Louis County Library would close that night for an undetermined period, we drove over to pick up a few books. We weren’t the only ones. We saw people of all ages — young kids to seniors — emerging with armfuls of books. Now if I can just stop obsessing over the newest pieces of bad news, I might actually crack one of them open. The good news is there’s no such thing as a due date anymore.
Seeing the stream of people heading into the library made me a lot happier than the story of rich people who went to the bank the other day and withdrew so much cash (as much as $50,000 apiece) that tellers ran out of $100 bills. The institutions were able to re-stock by the next day, but it’ll be interesting when those folks meet the ones who were in the long lines at gun stores around the country. What could go wrong?
I was looking forward to the fourth season of FX’s “Fargo,” but because the series is shot so close to its airdates, production wasn’t completed when they had to shut everything down this week because of the virus. Thus, it will not start on April 19th, as planned, but no new premiere date has been announced.
With movie theaters shuttered, my daughter tried to cancel her AMC A-list subscription. That should be a simple process online, but the company’s only allowing customers to quit via phone. She called and was told by the automated system she was 700th in line. She hung on for awhile, but told me later, “I gave up. The call dropped ten times (no exaggeration) and the online chat timed out. They must be overloaded, so I’ll try again some other time.” She’s in the customer service business, so she has sympathy for the humans receiving those calls. Funny the company could automate the queuing, but not the cancelling.
Final thought: if you’re gonna make a run to the supermarket, do something nice — ask your elderly neighbors what they need!