Post #27 Dispatch from Queens — The Perils of Venturing Outside
Sal Nunziato writes from Queens:
I made a plan on Sunday afternoon. I would make one trip outside a week. I'd do it all in one safe and carefully orchestrated hour. Groceries, post office, liquor store, pharmacy and then home for a scrubbing. Today was that day.
While Ditmars Blvd., a usually very busy strip was desolate, 31st Street seemed uncomfortbaly normal. I saw a man and his young son jogging, neither wearing masks. I saw a woman with a mask and her young child without. As I stood seven or possibly eight feet behind a woman, while we waited to get into the bank, some 70 year old lunk, walked right in front of us, no gloves, no mask, and just opened the door, used the ATM and walked out. A woman at the supermarket shopped with no mask or gloves and made no bones about pushing her cart right next to mine. Four construction workers stood, maskless and gloveless, smoking cigarettes as if they were standing around an office water cooler.
I'm following rules, why isn't anyone else?
I was wearing a homemade mask from a white t-shirt and coffee filters and was wearing white cotton gloves with my hood up. The shirt hung from my mouth and over my neck, like a fake beard and some other lunk started laughing at me. The Brooklyn in me jumped right into action. "YOU THINK THIS IS FUCKING FUNNY?" He backed off and said, "No" and walked away. How I got away with that looking like an older version of Burl Ives doing mime in a hoodie, I'll never know. I got home and Clorox-wiped every item purchased before bringing it in the house.
The trip took more out of me than a 12 hour work day. The stress of dancing and pirouetting around strangers, worrying about every little droplet however impossibly aimed right at my eyes or mouth made me breath funny, or truth be told, not breath. I feel like I am consciously trying to not breathe while I am outside. Try pushing a shopping cart filled with bottles of booze, bottles of seltzer, juice, cans of soup, and other groceries, five blocks with your face covered and not breathing. My glasses started to fog. Blind, and not breathing.
I keep saying I can do this, and I will. We all will do this as long as we need to. When the groceries were put away, I wiped down the tote bags and folded them one by one...except for one that wouldn't fold. I inadvertently left one package for the post office in the bag.
So much for one trip a week.
I made a plan on Sunday afternoon. I would make one trip outside a week. I'd do it all in one safe and carefully orchestrated hour. Groceries, post office, liquor store, pharmacy and then home for a scrubbing. Today was that day.
While Ditmars Blvd., a usually very busy strip was desolate, 31st Street seemed uncomfortbaly normal. I saw a man and his young son jogging, neither wearing masks. I saw a woman with a mask and her young child without. As I stood seven or possibly eight feet behind a woman, while we waited to get into the bank, some 70 year old lunk, walked right in front of us, no gloves, no mask, and just opened the door, used the ATM and walked out. A woman at the supermarket shopped with no mask or gloves and made no bones about pushing her cart right next to mine. Four construction workers stood, maskless and gloveless, smoking cigarettes as if they were standing around an office water cooler.
I'm following rules, why isn't anyone else?
I was wearing a homemade mask from a white t-shirt and coffee filters and was wearing white cotton gloves with my hood up. The shirt hung from my mouth and over my neck, like a fake beard and some other lunk started laughing at me. The Brooklyn in me jumped right into action. "YOU THINK THIS IS FUCKING FUNNY?" He backed off and said, "No" and walked away. How I got away with that looking like an older version of Burl Ives doing mime in a hoodie, I'll never know. I got home and Clorox-wiped every item purchased before bringing it in the house.
The trip took more out of me than a 12 hour work day. The stress of dancing and pirouetting around strangers, worrying about every little droplet however impossibly aimed right at my eyes or mouth made me breath funny, or truth be told, not breath. I feel like I am consciously trying to not breathe while I am outside. Try pushing a shopping cart filled with bottles of booze, bottles of seltzer, juice, cans of soup, and other groceries, five blocks with your face covered and not breathing. My glasses started to fog. Blind, and not breathing.
I keep saying I can do this, and I will. We all will do this as long as we need to. When the groceries were put away, I wiped down the tote bags and folded them one by one...except for one that wouldn't fold. I inadvertently left one package for the post office in the bag.
So much for one trip a week.
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