An Introvert’s Utopia? Not so.
Going for a walk on Day 7 of Quarantine was not what I thought it would be
Day 7. I flee my home with nothing but a Clorox wipe in my pocket. I leave behind all things familiar, my inquisitive roommate pawing at my laptop where we’d been playing an ancient game of Trivial Pursuit with our editor. My editor. The cat got laid off today.
Desperate to escape the calculated landscape of Zoom, I creep down the carpeted stairs and onto the rugged concrete.
I pause. At the edge of the sidewalk, I inhale a breath of what I hope is fresh air. Suddenly, next to me is a little girl and two cars at the intersection. In the time before, drivers struggled with the concept of a four-way stop. Today, they still do, but one thing has changed — the six feet rule.
When two cars, a little girl, and I meet, a woman yells from the porch, “Stay away from people!”
Maybe it was her mom or maybe she was just delivering a PSA.
The girl obeys. We perform our box square dance at a safe distance, the drivers unsure who has the right of way. In the end, I direct traffic, first the girl (for it is she and the other children who are our future).
Then the restless woman swinging her fist too close to me out her car window, the next vehicle, and finally, myself.
I press on. Gnats swarm the air, but not even these tiny monsters can pause my quest. One flies into my eye. It’s all over, for, in this brave new world, I can never, ever, touch my face.
The last face I’d touched, like really touched, belongs to a Taiwanese man. His final words to me: “I’ve been sick and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. Don’t worry, I haven’t been around any Chinese people!”
I didn’t know about the coronavirus.
Two months have passed and I pray this Asian is no longer at war with himself. A common cold is nothing to be ashamed of, Jerry.
Which brings me back to Quarantine, Day 7. On my walk, I do things I never would have done before. I smile at guys blasting rap music from their cars and then ask them kindly if they could roll their windows up. Remember, the six feet rule. Moving forward, I warn another young man about the gnats, my left eye twitching.
Not one of them tells me to smile more. In the time before, I neglected to buy mace. Now, the weapon of choice is a can of Lysol or a dry cough. These fellows simply thank me for my service. I’ve never felt safer as a woman.
Another child appears. It’s my neighbor Mia. This lanky nine-year-old circles me on her scooter, inches away from my untouched face. I run away and she runs after me; she thinks we are playing tag because her father (who is in charge of wiping down surfaces in our building) believes the media is making too big a deal out of this “new flu.”
“Crazy lady!” Mia echoes.
Despite losing our game of tag, she turns a 180 and invites me inside for ice cream. I chuckle; it’s not her fault she doesn’t understand how quarantine works. I politely decline and rescind the false promise I’d made to give them a roll of paper towels. Now, I only share paper products with the believers.
My heart pounds but I walk onward. I can’t let the naysayers get me down.
Just when I thought I was in the clear, a runner bolts toward me, her germs inching closer and closer. I call upon the pedestrian gods for her to slow down. Yet her pace quickens and my options are few: 1) Take my chances with oncoming traffic, 2) Hide in the bushes and risk cuts for more germs to infect, or 3) Run the other way.
I choose the third and I cannot beat the marathon runner breathing down my neck. “You’re okay,” she touches my shoulder. I was not okay. That was my first human touch in over a week and it got wasted on you, Karen.
Fortunately, I’m prepared. I scrub my shoulder with my lifeline — the Clorox wipe.
Coming home, I stop to touch the faces of flowers, not people. Fear not, I reassure myself, the purple crocuses cannot catch coronavirus. They only spread sneezes with pollen … which makes my nose tingle. I feel one coming on. You know what I’m talking about. The forbidden sound, the ghastly droplets that belong in quarantine, or at best, my elbow.
No. I am better than this. I sniff the sneeze back where it came from, the depths of allergy season.
After an intense handwashing session and the hottest shower of my young life, I infuse my iPhone with alcohol. My friend across the bridge invokes the Stafford Act in a group text debunking the debunking of the viral hoax. We all opt out of her updates. But I trust she’s coming from a good, paranoid place.
Going for a walk wasn’t what I thought it would be. I interacted with more people today than I did all of February. Social distancing has made this introverted hugger long for another brush of Karen’s shoulder. That’s what I get for braving the new roaring, sneezing, coughing 20s.
I return to the familiar, my laptop and my cat. As the sun sets, I watch from above as five teenage boys frolic much too close to each other on the train tracks. One police car pulls up, then two, then three.
In the time before, math was useless to a remote writer like me. Now, I’ve honed my seemingly forgotten skills from the third grade of both handwashing and multiplication. What is three times two? Six cops + five boys = 11 people. Over the federally mandated limit, which begs the question: Should I call the police?
It was a stressful day.
