My credit card slowly sank into the murky harbour — deeper, deeper and then it was gone. I turned to my wife: “This is the worst pandemic ever.”
We were on Fisherman’s Wharf, had stopped for ice cream because Victoria has a bylaw that says you must do so on days as glorious as we saw this week.
The problem was that I had dutifully donned a mask while in line, which made it impossible to eat the ice cream when the server handed it to me.
So, brandishing the cone aloft in my right hand — imagine the Statue of Liberty, with a fast-melting torch — I used the left, which was already clutching the credit card, to awkwardly pull off the face-covering. That’s when the card fell into the water.
Actually, “fell” is inaccurate. What the card really did was take flight, arcing gracefully — and with uncanny accuracy — into the impossibly narrow gap between the wharf and the ice cream shop. It was a perfect shot, nothing but net. Michael Jordan should have asked for my autograph, gushing and blushing like a schoolboy.
“That was fantastic,” said my wife. “Now try it with your driver’s licence.” She was wearing a mask, too, which made it hard to tell if she was expressing sarcasm or genuine wonder. Facial cues are so important.
Anyhoo, I blamed all this on the mask, and by extension the pandemic, because the alternative would have been to blame myself. “The anti-maxxers are right,” I said. “Also, we should get drunk and drive through red lights, because they impinge on our personal freedom, too.”
Or maybe that was just virus fatigue talking. That is, shouldn’t this be over by now? What do you mean the curve is rising again?
When COVID-19 showed up on our doorstep in March, its soggy belongings stuffed in a couple of black plastic garbage bags, it said it would only stay for a couple of months, three tops.
“Just until I get back on my feet,” it promised.
Except now it’s looking awfully settled-in, isn’t it? No sign of leaving any time soon: Its shoes are in the closet, its family photos are on the wall, and positive tests are trending up. We drop hints that it’s time for it to go — “Sure would be nice to have a school year, maybe see a concert” — to no avail.
“If it’s not going to leave,” she whispered to me, watching COVID clip its toenails on the couch, “maybe we should try to appreciate its good side.”
So, I gave it a try, came up with a list of the pandemic’s positive points. Here are the top 10.
1. There will never be a better year to visit Butchart Gardens.
2. For once, your yard looks like Butchart Gardens. Sort of.
3. Life is less cluttered. The treadmill has slowed. No more non-stop racing from home to work to school to soccer game to dinner to piano lesson to meeting to supermarket. Now it’s just home to liquor store, home to liquor store, home to liquor. …
4. No more unwanted hugs. Or restraining orders resulting from unwanted hugs.
5. Trudeau’s latest conflict/act of entitlement/scandal/apology-generator seems relatively unimportant. So does everything else that used to get your knickers in a knot.
6. Looking up the term “glory holes” after reading a B.C. Centre for Disease Control health advisory.
7. More quality time with your loved ones. Or your family.
8. The Canucks will return to the Stanley Cup playoffs next week. The Earth is healing.
9. We got to meet Dr. Bonnie Henry. We got to forget about hospital parking fees, the Colwood Crawl, flight delays, dressing appropriately for work, Pokemon Go, gluten-free as a fad, transit buses that won’t stop because they’re already full, Tom Brady, shaving, the Academy Awards as a political platform, Kim Jong Un and climate change. Wait, no, don’t forget about climate change.
10. It’s in the worst of times that the best of us comes out. Most people are being helpful, kind. After I deep-sixed my credit card, the couple behind us in line offered to pay for our ice cream. This is the best pandemic ever.
