COVID COMICS
I’m Gonna Miss The Pandemic
But just a tiny, little, wee bit
As nutty as this sounds, I’m gonna miss pandemic life.
Don’t get me wrong. I am VERY excited to get back to normal. My first shot is today, and I feel like a kid in a candy store, in Disneyland, on my birthday, an hour before my dad comes back from a long trip with a new puppy.
Nevertheless, COVID has made my life ridiculously easy, convenient, and simple. I go nowhere, do nothing, and take no risks.
Life without COVID was undoubtedly much more interesting, dynamic, exciting, and healthy. But it was also more perilous. As much as an absence of social contact violates our basic human needs and leaves me isolated, depressed, and detached, it also presents no possibility of embarrassing myself. Or not being liked. Or no one laughing at my jokes. Or accidentally saying something grossly inappropriate.
It’s hard to be social without measuring myself against others. While my mom often told me not to compare my insides with other people’s outsides, I often do not do as I am told.
Doing things with other people carries the inherent risk that they will judge me. And a significantly higher chance that I’ll imagine that they are.
Watching TV presents such little risk. Maybe I won’t like a show and I’ll have to switch to something else. And maybe I won’t like the next thing either. Okay. But that’s not going wake me up at in the middle of the night feeling panicked and flooded with shame.
There are also the many smaller things I’ll miss. Like the ability to give myself quick, free, terribly uneven haircuts without consequence. And not having to clean the house for company. And the ease of never having to be anywhere at any time. Or find parking. Plus the relaxing certainty of not doubting whether I’m getting our money’s worth out of all these premium TV subscriptions.
I’ll miss not having hygienists scraping tartar from my bleeding gums. And putting off that colonoscopy without guilt. And not having to make up excuses for not joining a gym.
Yep, I’m gonna miss this ye old simplicity of pandemic lockdown. Even when I get back to the excitement of mixing it up, challenging myself, growing, and appreciating every last little thing that I took for granted pre-pandemic, you can bet I’m gonna long for these risk-free, easy times.
Comics by David Milgrim
Just trying to feel okay, one comic at a time
If you liked this, you might also like this comic about the loss of a dog.
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