A partial list of things I miss during current events.
- The sound of regular, everyday, foot traffic walking past the house. It’s gotten to the point where I miss the drunk, excitable 20-somethings that would stumble past the house after 10pm on the weekends, loudly telling friends and the world alike how they really felt.
- The ability to just run around the corner to the restaurants and grab takeout on the nights when we’re feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and not up for cooking. I didn’t realize quite how much I’d taken that for granted until I called up one of those places a few weeks ago and was told that they’d closed for the foreseeable.
- Along similar lines: God, but I miss going to the movies far more than someone who didn’t really go to the movies that much should. I specifically miss the Bagdad, my local theater, with its cheap prices and welcome, wonderfully underwhelming burger (always accompanied by the far higher quality tater tots, or else you weren’t doing it right); when that place finally re-opens, I can see myself going no matter what’s playing, just because I’m craving the experience so much. I’m going to end up being the only person in a months-after-the-fact screening of Onward, I can tell.
- For the last couple of weeks, I’ve really wanted to go to the local park. I’ve been craving it, oddly; just walking through the park. But here’s the problem: I’ve walked past parks in Portland since we all started social distancing, and it seems as if everyone else in Portland wants to go to the park, and no-one else in Portland is into the idea of keeping away from each other. This isn’t true elsewhere, with passers-by generally great at the six-feet-apart rule otherwise. But parks, apparently, are full of assholes. I don’t want to be one of them. Sorry, park.
- Regular mail. Right now, it’s trickling down to junk mail from politicians.
- Everyone else working in offices. It’s not that I feel special working from home when they’re in the office as much as it’s, when people were in the office, at least I could generally get responses quicker. Rassenfrassen.
- Posts where I could come up with punchlines that work.