Things I’ve Learned In Isolation
April 15, 2020 at 11:29 a.m.
Things I’ve Learned In Isolation
By Roger Grossman-
We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, the people we live with, the people we work with and the people who have been our friends.
I want to use my space this week talking about some of the things I have learned over this month. Some of them are sports-related, and some of them are not. Some of them, I hope, you find humorous. Some aren’t funny at all.
One thing I know is that even the most even-tempered people are totally frustrated by being stuck at home. Snow storms last for a day, maybe two — and you have at least two days warning to get supplies and be ready.
A month ago, no one really understood it would be like this.
Even simple things, like running out of sugar, are now complicated. You can’t run to the neighbors — social distancing. It feels risky to run to the store just for that, even though the people in our grocery stores have pulled out all of the stops to help make our visits safe. Tough spot, eh?
And, of course, we have to address the angst caused by being with the same people for virtually every minute of every day all week for more than a month.
We’re wearing thin, aren’t we?
What about renting a movie? Our family has a procedure now, including using a Clorox wipe to receive the movie coming out of the Redbox machine like a glove. A second wipe is in the other hand to wipe down the exterior of the box. On the hood of your vehicle, a third wipe secures the inside of the box, and a fourth kills any germs underneath where the disk was.
And we do it all over again when we are ready to take it back.
I really miss working. I always thought that it would be fun to just take an extended period off — say a month or six weeks. I never did it because I didn’t want to leave the radio station short-handed for that long.
I am like many Americans who are temporarily operating on a reduced work schedule while we ride this thing out.
It’s not that I don’t have anything to do. I have people at my church I am gladly trying to look after. I am trying to help with my six-year-old son’s e-learning (which entailed getting a ruling on whether a cone-shaped object can technically roll, even if it’s just in a circle). And we have a dog that we got from the Animal Welfare League two weeks ago. We’re training him — and he’s training us.
I probably won’t complain about getting up at 4:15 anymore, but that first week back — whenever that is — is going to be brutal!
Times like these make us take a hard look at what we value, and this month has taught me that we value toilet paper like gold and silver.
You have not lived until you have watched determined people following a nice young man who is responsible for pushing a large cart filled with bathroom tissue to its rightful place in the store — and having only a few packages left to actually put on the shelves by the time he gets it there.
And we have put a new focus of appreciation on some people and their jobs.
On a horrible day in 2001, the images of fireman and first responders running up stairways in the World Trade Center made us re-examine how we felt about and treat the men and women who work in those professions.
The Coronavirus crisis of 2020 is doing that same thing with people in certain aspects of the healthcare industry.
When it takes 30-45 minutes for someone to get gear on to start working, it qualifies as a dangerous job.
Thank you, for your courage.
From a sports perspective, we’ve been challenged to consider a world where sports doesn’t exist. I have been keeping my game broadcasting skills sharp by calling Oliver’s Wii baseball games. Like the Cubs for most of my life, he’s not very good at baseball but he told me “I hope it rains, dad, so we can stay inside and I can play baseball on the Wii.”
Most of all, we keep hearing about “the new normal.”
I hear a lot of people talking about what it will be like and when we might start living under those conditions. Their opinions vary, and so I am skeptical about all of it.
I do know this: I have never looked forward to a season-opening high school football scrimmage in all my life like the one that’s coming in August.
Well, the one we all hope is coming anyway.
We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, the people we live with, the people we work with and the people who have been our friends.
I want to use my space this week talking about some of the things I have learned over this month. Some of them are sports-related, and some of them are not. Some of them, I hope, you find humorous. Some aren’t funny at all.
One thing I know is that even the most even-tempered people are totally frustrated by being stuck at home. Snow storms last for a day, maybe two — and you have at least two days warning to get supplies and be ready.
A month ago, no one really understood it would be like this.
Even simple things, like running out of sugar, are now complicated. You can’t run to the neighbors — social distancing. It feels risky to run to the store just for that, even though the people in our grocery stores have pulled out all of the stops to help make our visits safe. Tough spot, eh?
And, of course, we have to address the angst caused by being with the same people for virtually every minute of every day all week for more than a month.
We’re wearing thin, aren’t we?
What about renting a movie? Our family has a procedure now, including using a Clorox wipe to receive the movie coming out of the Redbox machine like a glove. A second wipe is in the other hand to wipe down the exterior of the box. On the hood of your vehicle, a third wipe secures the inside of the box, and a fourth kills any germs underneath where the disk was.
And we do it all over again when we are ready to take it back.
I really miss working. I always thought that it would be fun to just take an extended period off — say a month or six weeks. I never did it because I didn’t want to leave the radio station short-handed for that long.
I am like many Americans who are temporarily operating on a reduced work schedule while we ride this thing out.
It’s not that I don’t have anything to do. I have people at my church I am gladly trying to look after. I am trying to help with my six-year-old son’s e-learning (which entailed getting a ruling on whether a cone-shaped object can technically roll, even if it’s just in a circle). And we have a dog that we got from the Animal Welfare League two weeks ago. We’re training him — and he’s training us.
I probably won’t complain about getting up at 4:15 anymore, but that first week back — whenever that is — is going to be brutal!
Times like these make us take a hard look at what we value, and this month has taught me that we value toilet paper like gold and silver.
You have not lived until you have watched determined people following a nice young man who is responsible for pushing a large cart filled with bathroom tissue to its rightful place in the store — and having only a few packages left to actually put on the shelves by the time he gets it there.
And we have put a new focus of appreciation on some people and their jobs.
On a horrible day in 2001, the images of fireman and first responders running up stairways in the World Trade Center made us re-examine how we felt about and treat the men and women who work in those professions.
The Coronavirus crisis of 2020 is doing that same thing with people in certain aspects of the healthcare industry.
When it takes 30-45 minutes for someone to get gear on to start working, it qualifies as a dangerous job.
Thank you, for your courage.
From a sports perspective, we’ve been challenged to consider a world where sports doesn’t exist. I have been keeping my game broadcasting skills sharp by calling Oliver’s Wii baseball games. Like the Cubs for most of my life, he’s not very good at baseball but he told me “I hope it rains, dad, so we can stay inside and I can play baseball on the Wii.”
Most of all, we keep hearing about “the new normal.”
I hear a lot of people talking about what it will be like and when we might start living under those conditions. Their opinions vary, and so I am skeptical about all of it.
I do know this: I have never looked forward to a season-opening high school football scrimmage in all my life like the one that’s coming in August.
Well, the one we all hope is coming anyway.
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