Blog : the giggles that led to (dying) gasps for breath

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3/16/2021 12:20 am

the giggles that led to (dying) gasps for breath

When people see the word “anniversary” it invariably invokes thoughts of celebration. Wedding anniversaries are big because that is a moment in life people want to acknowledge and enjoy, year after year. When you see or hear someone reference the anniversary of September 11th it sounds odd at first, because that’s a tragic day in history, and who besides the perpetrators would want to celebrate that? That particular moment is not one we celebrate so much as recognize and perhaps spend a few extra moments pondering, lest we forget the lessons that point in history might have taught us. An anniversary is just the date on which an event took place during a previous year. If you are merely remembering, it is often referred to as commemorating. That’s a much more somber sounding word. We celebrate the anniversary of the rover landing on Mars but we commemorate the anniversary of the day of the Pearl Harbor attack.

For me, there’s no specific date that I would pinpoint as the anniversary for the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic; I just recall things starting in March. I’m not likely to get too sorrowful or political here, but I did want to take a moment to reminisce about one thing. When this first began, and the virus was mostly a threat that appeared to be coming from China, I can recall seeing some of their social media responses to what was happening in their country. Planes hadn’t yet begun flying contagious people into our (and other) country, so seeing the often amusing videos from the place that was affected admittedly put me at ease. If they weren’t taking it too seriously it probably wasn’t that big of a deal, right?

The most memorable were a series of videos where (already) masked people were encountering each other in public spaces and exaggerating their attempts to remain at a safe distance from one another. It was meant to be silly without being mocking - or at least that is how I viewed it, and most people not of that culture also seemed to see it that way. They were the infected, or the ones in danger of being infected, and they were joking about it instead of sending out dire warnings to the rest of the world. Looking back, it kind of makes sense that someone like Trump would also see things like this and not want to look a fool if he took it seriously, only to later find out it was no big deal. I guess he never learned “better safe than sorry” and the results you don’t need to be reminded of, because I’m sure you get enough of it these days.

We marveled at the beginning of the pandemic at how the creative people could keep being creative and entertaining us, even though we couldn’t leave our houses to go to a movie theatre or concert hall. This while arguing over whether or not we should have even been taking the pandemic seriously. A year later we’re clamoring to get out of our houses so we can marvel at how the creative people can still entertain us, but on a grander scale, and I have to keep saying; our priorities should be elsewhere. Until this virus is no longer a threat, none of us deserve the luxuries we are demanding, and especially not at the cost of the health and safety of others. If you seriously can’t cut your own hair (or go without), cook your own food, watch a DVD and stay the fuck inside for a while so everyone can heal then you are a sad, pathetic detriment to our existence.

People tried very hard to normalize, and even capitalize, on mask wearing but these days it’s mostly just a point of contention. Adult content providers thought they would be cool and start filming wearing masks, but it never seemed to catch on, for what I feel are obvious reasons. Despite initial predictions, I haven’t seen t.v. shows or movies add mask wearing to their productions, for what I feel are different but equally obvious reasons. The masks are not attractive, and were never meant to be. Trying to fetishize them was a good idea that just didn’t work out. People have done everything they can, at every turn, to go without wearing a mask and the entertainment industry was no exception. Some think there will be a slew of pandemic-related features coming out once this all clears up but I predict it will be quite some time before people willingly plop down their hard-earned cash to basically relive one of the worst years of their lives. Only if it is a comedy, and we can maybe laugh away our residual anger and fears, will it be a welcome success. Otherwise, I think all of us could go without a reminder of the year 2020 and Covid-19 and be very, very happy indeed.


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