Rip Van Winkle Must Have Had Covid
I don’t know how it works for you, but Time goes faster when I’m busy. Put a STOP/SLOW sign in my hand on a road crew and an 8 hour day will seem like 8 days. Proof that time is relative, just like Albert claimed. Take the couple of years we’ve had with Covid lockdowns. Mostly stayed home, maybe drove in for supplies once a week, basically in a two (or three?) year quarantine.
But looking back those years seem easily double. And other than the pandemic itself, life slogged along without trips, without parties, without concerts, without … well, just about everything. The days all seemed remarkably indistinguishable. And then the weeks and months and eventually the years, nothing to serve as a Marker. Oh right, that was the year we flew to Venice or yeah, that was our son’s big wedding in Portland … or, remember, that was the year we moved to Denver.
No, none of that happened. Nothing happened! We quarantined behind surgical masks and waited for the virus to wear itself out. Except it didn’t! It mutated. But we stayed the same. And so did the days and the weeks and on through another year. Or was it two?
Maybe Rip Van Winkle had lived through his own plague. He didn’t fall asleep — time just stood still. Sure, he thought he’d slept through a couple of decades and yeah, things were different. Just like Covid. There’s a war in Ukraine and an election went by with a new President now.
And yet … and yet … we weren’t really asleep, just living in suspended animation, waiting, always waiting to be awakened, the clocks ticking again, normality restored, time measurable finally. This is Year 3 of the Plague. I think. My hair is a couple years longer and my beard is noticeably whiter. I’m hoping to reset the clocks. Soon. Groundhog’s Day has to be over by now. Doesn’t it?
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Tags: Groundhog's Day is Covid, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Time Stoppage