Allow me to share three commercials with you. They’re each only about 16 seconds long, so it’s not like your time watching them will be wasted. Comparatively speaking, the time you spend reading the diatribe that follows could very well be better spent fishing hair out of the drain in the tub.
It should be stated right here and now that my original intent was to speak to the third commercial where the old man is telling the parked car to slow down.
After locating that one and being reminded of the other two, I couldn’t help but to post those as well. If things go well, they’ll help to support my point.
Otherwise, I’ll scatter the one with the dog throughout this post to lighten the mood. It’s just too gosh darned funny not re-use that one.
As you may recall, I posted a lengthy rant on this day 10 years ago about the failings of Generation X and the Baby Boomers to effectively manage things. In rereading that piece, I’m wondering why I didn’t deploy a more effective and less colloquial use of the English language when I wrote it.
In that post, I asserted that the two generations of people who are currently running the world are ill equipped to do so. Reason being is that we never really had to fight for our way of life like the generation(s) before us.
I summarized it all with a statement directed at the Greatest Generation which resonates a decade later.
“At this time, we’re well overdue in taking on the hardships you encountered in order to build our ability to git-r-done. If we don’t fix it now, generations subsequent to X are going to be more screwed up than we are.“
Right?
We’ve come to a point in our history in which upper management is primarily composed of Boomers and X-ers, and boy howdy do we suck.
When we’re presented with a potential problem, we don’t stop to fully assess the situation and its inherent risk. Instead, we initiate a full blown panic and make a series of bad decisions based on our bad interpretations of the evidence. This happens much in the same way the old man yells at the parked car in the commercial series posted above.
Sure the car looks like it’s fast, but the guy couldn’t appreciate that it wasn’t even moving.
Suffice to say, I have to discuss the damn pandemic again because our collective mishandling of that situation best represents a dog chasing a parked car.
Case in point. If you’re in a restaurant nowadays, you don’t need a mask if you’re seated with your party in relatively close quarters. If you stand up to hit the bar for another round of Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters for the table, you have to mask up.
If you have to excuse yourself to the restroom because of a compromised digestive process, or excessive consumption of Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, you have to mask up.
Apparently, the restaurant industry has cracked the code which dictates that the COVID can only be transmitted at specific altitudes, and discriminates against the shorties. Here I was thinking it was behavior and genetics that has kept me from contracting it, when all this time it was just my height, or lack thereof.
Being seated, filling one’s pie hole with chips and salsa creates a protective bubble around us which wards off all kinds of evil viruses and other malcontents, save for the occasional gang of roving Mariachis.
But what if altitude doesn’t come into play when it comes to catching the COVID in a restaurant? When you’re moving through a room which is not filled to capacity you need a mask, but when you’re seated in close quarters, you don’t need one. Where exactly is the common sense in that one?
Ladies and gentlemen, how is that any different from yelling at a parked car to slow down?
We’re doing it all wrong.
I don’t really know the right way, but I do know this.
We didn’t behave this way in previous pandemics, and we still managed to survive them.
I know this because I was born at the outset of one of the deadliest pandemics in history. Based on the way we’re behaving today, the first few years of my life would have been marred with masking, social distancing, and plexiglass. Furthermore, the dangers of viruses and the protocols on how to live life around them would have been ingrained into my psyche at a young age.
It wasn’t. Care to guess when I learned about the Hong Kong flu?
It was barely a year ago when I realized “varying levels of retarditude have limited our progress” on the matter.
In a few short hours, I’ll be going to a family thing where the host will be serving a nacho bar.
I’ll be bringing the Guacamole, which I lovingly assembled this morning with a pastry blender, a wad of paper towels, and a curious puppy dog waiting for something she should never have.
It’s a shame that dogs don’t mix well with avocados as well as tomatoes and onions do, but at the same time, more for me.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Mexican food was invented to reflect and resonate the glory that is Guacamole.
At that get-together, the discussion will invariably turn to the issue of the pandemic. Totalitarian attitudes will be espoused that vaccinations should be obtained, masks should be worn, and red cars parked on the street should be the object of admonishment.
We just aren’t going to be able to get back to normal otherwise.
To wit, I will wipe an escaped globule of Guacamole from my shirt, and ask a question designed to trigger cognitive dissonance among my fellow X-ers and a Boomer or two. For what it’s worth, triggering cognitive dissonance is quickly becoming one of my favorite pastimes.
“What makes you think we’ll ever get back to normal doing what we’re doing now?”
Members of the mob will then stare at me in stunned silence, lamenting why they even let me speak in the first place. They will then realize that I’m the one that made the delicious Guacamole, and subsequently make a disparaging remark about the lame-ass beard I’m trying to grow in the remaining weeks leading up to my New Year.
Such remarks will signal to me that my point was unassailable.
Consider the old man yelling at the parked car though. How is the management group’s (comprised of Boomers and X-ers) handling of the pandemic any different from that guy?
Did a 15 day lock-down at the outset of this thing get us back to normal?
Did an accelerated onboarding of a vaccine get us back to normal?
Did masking get us back to normal?
Did social distancing get us back to normal?
Will double masking get us back to normal?
Will vaccine passports get us back to normal?
Will telecommuting get us back to normal?
Will virtual schooling get us back to normal?
Will listening to the experts get us back to normal?
Will anything that we’ve tried get us back to normal?
The answer is a resounding “No”. They are the new normal.
Actually, I do know the right way. I didn’t know it earlier when I said it, but I’ve had an epiphany since then.
The goal, ladies and gentlemen, is to get to a point where we can look back on the bygone days when we were told by the powers that be that we had to wear masks and maintain at least six feet of real estate between ourselves and others.
The method we need to use to achieve this goal is to come to the realization that the fast looking, red sports car isn’t moving.
