The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Out here on the Left Coast we have slightly different sets of priorities than the Heartland. When the Governor shuttered all but ‘essential’ businesses to quarantine us citizens from superfluous gatherings, one of those businesses was the cannabis stores. Apparently this was because they offered medical treatments. Both physical and mental, I guess. Yesterday I read that liquor stores previously closed would be allowed to reopen. Grocery stores were reporting that shelves of beer and wine were bare and so … once again the argument for medical treatment must have applied to liquor stores.

When the going gets tough, as the saying goes, the tough turn to medication. I’m fully expecting oxycontin stores to open soon, a last ditch panacea for Forced Isolation Syndrome. Surprisingly the restrictions on church services are still in effect, but then, like I mentioned, this is the Left Coast. More likelihood yoga classes will reopen before mainstream and fundamentalist churches. And today in the newspaper that still gets delivered, obviously an essential service, I read that the gun rights folks are up in arms, or possibly without arms, over the closure of gun stores.

When the going gets tough, buy an assault rifle. They argue that in this era of pandemic panic, they have to protect their families. If that isn’t essential, what is? Well, cannabis, evidently. And liquor, obviously. Their rights are being violated, they howl, as if being restricted to their homes is somehow not a violation of their freedom of assembly. I feel their pain, I really do. When the toilet paper runs out and the peasants take to the streets, pitchforks in hand, how do they protect themselves and their huddled family? Throw empty liquor bottles at the mob? Explain patiently that they must cease and desist, return to their quarantined shelters, go home? Without brandishing a weapon to make their case?

When this epidemic has run its course, one thing we will learn from this disease: what exactly is an essential business. My pals in the business, so-called, of art, or of music, well, if they didn’t know already their true value in this society, they do now. I just hope they aren’t the ones lobbying for those gun stores to reopen.

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