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Quote of the Day: Meeting a Coronavirus Lunatic
“It is my experience that if we make the effort to listen to people when we meet them … it is then easy to find something to like in practically everyone.” — Bryant H. McGill
Oh stuff it, McGill. Your starry-eyed philosophy would have thrown up its hands in despair if it ever came across a guy I met the other day.
A totally non-gratuitous photo of Bob for this post.
Before we meet that guy, I need to say a few words about Bob, who has turned Marie and me into scofflaws. You see, we often take off Bob’s leash in parks that are posted with those darn signs that read, “Leash Your Dog.” Bob enjoys his leashless romps so much that we just can’t deny the pooch his little pleasures.
But we only do this when we’re on paths that are wide and sparsely frequented. Sometimes Bob meets other off-leash dogs, like the one you see above. Bob takes no guff off the big dogs. I don’t either, as you will discover later in this post.
Bob is a mild-mannered dog who trots along next to us and rarely even looks up at someone coming toward us on the other side. Most people smile when they see Bob.
The hulking, bearded, bemasked guy who met us on the path two days ago didn’t. In fact, when he got within 15 or so feet from Bob, he stopped, backed up in horror, and shouted, “Get that [expletive] dog away from me. Don’t you know that dogs spread the coronavirus!?”
“It’s highly unlikely,” I replied, “Even if he had the virus, which in animals is extremely rare, he would still have to get close enough to lick your nose.” The hulking guy sulked. He was apparently not in the mood to engage in a little banter concerning dog to human transmission of the coronavirus.
But he wasn’t finished yet: “And get that [expletive] dog on a leash. Don’t you know the [expletive] leash laws?” The guy was full of rhetorical questions.
I was a bit taken aback, so I asked Marie to leash up Bob.
I was about ten feet from the guy when I took a step toward him to say something to placate the guy, but I didn’t get a chance. The bearded one backed off like I was an active carrier of the Black Death and screamed, “Get away from me, you old piece of [expletive]!” He apparently thought that terribly clever so he repeated it, “Get away from me, you old piece of [expletive].”
That was a milestone of sorts. I’m 82 years old and that was the first time in my life that someone had called me an old piece of [expletive]. One likes to keep track of these things.
He got the “old” part right, but I think his addition of the phrase, “piece of [expletive],” was a bit overwrought and gratuitous, don’t you?
The scene was so ridiculous that I started to laugh. “Old piece of [expletive] — ha, ha, ha, that’s a good one,” I said, my laughter dripping with sarcasm.
Marie, like my mom and my first sergeant before her, warned me that my wiseacre nature was going to get me into trouble someday. I‘ve never listened to any of them, but this guy might be the trouble that they’ve been predicting.
I’m pretty sure the bearded one would like to have attacked me, but he had already shown he was afraid to get near me and my toxic swarm of coronacooties. That is, the guy’s own paranoia protected me. I wasn’t sorry to see the guy continue on his way down the path.
Here’s what Marie and I talked about as we continued our walk:
- Is the daily drumbeat of virus news for the past three months—worldwide deaths, ten different versions of how you can catch the virus, the danger of comorbidities, and so forth — driving some people over the edge, people whose personalities may already have been susceptible to fear and hysteria? The guy I met in the park is not the only one I’ve seen with unreasoning reactions to the virus. Even in the open air, some walkers detour so far around Marie, Bob, and me that it’s like we have coronavirus bugs that are poised to leap 20 feet and then take a 90-degree turn up their noses.
- Why are so many people wearing masks in the open air? Have they not heard that catching the virus while they’re outside walking in parks and neighborhoods is nigh impossible? I even see people driving their cars alone wearing masks.
- I’ve had a few of these tense encounters over the last few years involving Bob, and I just can’t resist responding like a smartass when some jerk tells me, in that arrogant tone that bullies use, that I need to do what he tells me to do. It just gets my hackles up. I usually laugh in their faces. I may have abandoned my common sense in my old age. Nah, that’s not it. I was born this way. Marie tells me that I’m going to get beat up someday. She’s probably right. I really need to stop setting these guys off. It’s about as smart as taunting a belligerent drunk.
- By the way, have you come across any overreaction similar to the ones I’ve described?
I used to see it more often. But I suspect that mothers who leashed their children gave up on the practice when they were intimidated by the glares and disapproving words of what were probably Progressives or Karens in training.
A mother can only hear the words “leashed like a dog” so many times before she gives up the practice, no matter how handy and secure it was.
Justmein, small children are just like untrained or overly rambunctious dogs. They will bolt into the street in a heartbeat.
She, I too am sorry the practice had almost disappeared. BTW, I like the image of you jumping up and down to make the bells ring. That’s not a metaphor for your life, is it?
Are you saying I’m a ding-a-ling?
Berry good!
And then there are the people who demand a government leash on people to restrain them from making any consequential decisions for themselves.
The trick is distinguishing one situation from the other.
Sometimes while on a run a dog follow or run along side me. The owner would chase me and the dog yelling for the dog. I would then slow, allow the owner to catch up, then take off again. Three times was my limit. An Irish setter once followed me for ten miles. No owner in sight, I wanted to keep the dog. My wife said no way and tracked down Ruby;s owner.
If you ever meet a fan of Harry Harrison, you could tell them your dog’s name is Bowb. :-)
So reassuring to read thru the comments and realize so many people here are not into becoming coronavirus zombies.
Bella, Mark and I love finding places where almost no one else is out and about so we are free to let Bella off her leash. So far, we have not encountered anyone else while indulging the dog in her need for freedom.
On my social media feeds, parents are complaining that the local grammar schools are requiring their grammar school aged children to wear masks while participating in online teaching conducted over Zoom.
When I hear things like this, I just don’t know what to think. I even run to the mirror to check that I am not bleeding from my eyes, and ears and mouth in a bout of near fatal hysteria. It seems like since March 13th we are all living in some alternate reality.
Someone asked an Amish woman why the Amish had not come down with COVID. Her reply was “We don’t watch TV.” And that I think is 90 percent of the problem.
Probably too much hard work and fresh air, as well.
Actually, a lot of them do watch TV. They don’t usually have TV in their homes, though. I haven’t heard of any congregation that would allow that. But one time driving home through Amish country in Indiana we stopped at a McD where I watched a young Amish mother ignore her little offspring because her eyes were glued to the TV.
Here is an article about covid-19 among Amish people who are a half-hour away from that TV. (By car. It’s further by buggy.)
She & Carol,
You guys might be kidding a little but I think there is much more truth here than not. This thing seems to kill only (at least almost exclusively) people in their 80s who already have respiratory problems and 1-3 additional comorbidities. Someone who is healthy and gets plenty of aerobic exercise (also known as work) is probably very unlikely to succumb to this rather weird virus. Of course, the nudniks (a technical term that means “pain in the #ss” in Yiddish) will find the one person on the North American continent who was young and healthy and died of COVID. They will scream about it in a 1″ headline in your local newspaper scaring the heck out of everyone.
You also might get hit by a meteor so don’t go out at all.
Regards,
Jim
Yes! And now I seem to be hearing more about the number of cases rather than the number of deaths. That paints a scarier picture too.
Weep,
Other tricks of the trade. Write your headline about how many deaths were “announced” today, a new high for a one day total. Of course, the deaths were all “announced” on that day. This doesn’t mean they occurred in one day. The deaths may have happened over the last two weeks and now they are “announcing” them. I just read an article that pulled such a beautiful switcheroo that I couldn’t believe it. The headline read “COVID-19 deaths rise again in county…”. The paragraph started “…175 fatalities were reported statewide. Just slip the number for the whole state in (22 million population) while you were talking about the county. Of course, they use the word “reported” instead of announced. However, they are pulling the same garbage. They were reported on Wednesday but that doesn’t tell you what the period was in which they actually occurred.
Nice to get paid to scare the living hell out of people. Some journalist. Some idiot.
Regards,
Jim
Your link for the article about the Amish did not come up in your reply. Can you attempt a re-post of it?
Local Calif newspaper had as its headline “County deaths approach a new record high.” Which is meaningless, as if even one new fatality occurred, that would boost the fatality numbers higher by one and only one addition.
Yet the way the mind reads that headline is in response to the suggestion that a crisis is now upon us, and we are all gonna die.
And so we will. In 70, 80 years tops.
Sorry about that. I’m pretty sure this was the one: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2020/08/21/coronavirus-spreads-among-amish-northern-indiana/5536002002/
Are they still doing those, even though I was doing my best to mock those headlines back in the day?