The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Down at the Mabana Sunset Villa, our premier assisted living complex here on the aging South End, the Covid Lockdowns come along practically once a month. Help is pretty hard to find at the Villa, not just because pay is low and benefits are non-existent, but Covid has taken its toll on morale. Visitors are required to wear masks but we have plenty of folks who think — and I use the phrase loosely — that the Pandemic is a hoax, Fauci is a liar, vaccines are a government plot or … well, hell if I know what they’re thinking.

So inevitably the Villa has someone roll in, tests positive and the place goes into quarantine. After all, these are the folks with ‘underlying conditions’. If they die, of course, the anti-vaxxers will say they didn’t die of Covid, they died of underlying conditions. It’s like pushing someone off a cliff and saying, well, it wasn’t the shove that did them in, it was hitting the bottom. That, or some will say the vaccine they took killed them. So much for polio or smallpox vaccines these naysayers took as kids, lucky they’re alive, these yahoos.

My friend Janet works at the Villa. Over our weekly coffee together she unloads her frustrations. “We got residents who can’t see their kids or relatives or friends. Nobody but us when the Lockdown goes into effect. Half the time we’re in quarantine. Some putz on the staff who thinks Covid is phony baloney rolls in, tests positive, then here we go again. I can’t imagine working in a hospital anymore.”

Janet and I worked at the old Everett General Hospital, before Providence absorbed it. I was an orderly and she was nurse’s aide, what we never refer to as the ‘good old days’. But compared to what must be going on now, maybe they were.

“Strange times,” I say before we usually refill our cups. “Sad times,” she says, pouring the last of hers down the sink. I want to add something comforting, maybe even optimistic. Damn if I can think of a thing.

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If you’re like me, and God help you if you are, you’re having trouble keeping track of what day of the week it is. Even worse, what month. Time sometimes stands still, sometimes races ahead, and worse, occasionally slips backwards. This is the sixth or seventh month of the Covid panic, outbreaks on the rise once again here and worldwide. You probably track the statistics the way you track the election polls, feverishly and incessantly. You pray to your gods that this epidemic will wane, that the election will be over, that a vaccine will be discovered that will give immunity to both.

I make one trip a week to the grocery store to stock up on food and reality suppressors. Every couple weeks I fill up the truck’s gas tank. In a real emergency I’ll have to haul into a hardware store to buy a replacement toilet for the one that broke recently, no doubt overworked by stressful bowel syndrome brought on by too much internet news. Other than that we’re sequestered here on the partisan South End, caged animals walking the trails of our self-imposed prison, wondering when Normality will return. Lately we think never.

Rumors trickle into our little bubble. A naked dead man washed up on shore a few miles north of us. Antifa? A Covid victim? Another suicide by someone who opted out of quarantine? Wildfires are burning up across the freeway. Or was it in Colorado? Fires seem to be engulfing half the west. Some say global warming, some say leftist guerillas. All information coming in is suspect now. Iranian disinformation and Chinese hackers, one of our neighbors claimed. Personally, I think he’s a Russian plant. His lights stay on late into the night. What’s he up to that late at night? Course, maybe he thinks the same thing of me. But we know, don’t we?, that I can’t even speak Russian much less work for the KGB since I am workaphobic.

The election is supposed to happen in a week. Only the gullible think this will occur. Sure, votes will be cast, media will report delays, ballots will be rejected, speculation of tampering will be rampant. The election will pass, maybe no winner declared, martial law declared, plague masks declared illegal to wear, schools reopened or closed or reopened again. A new election will be called, the last election voided, the President will speak on Fox News to say we’ve turned the corner, to declare victory over Covid, to promise a vaccine before the next election if there ever is one.

We have, he will say, nothing to fear but fear itself. He will declare that he is the first to say this. He insists that he’s the first to say this, that he said it long ago but the fake news won’t cover brilliant quotes of his. He will tell you what you have to be afraid of. Plenty, he’ll say. Suburban takeovers, racist riots, plague riddled immigrants, our own FBI, the Chinese, the liberals, even his own Republicans. Trust him, he’ll say, he’s got this. He’s got the best team. He’s got a Plan and when we’re ready, he’ll show it to us. We’re not ready yet. Maybe in a few more months.

But … what month is it now?

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