Hey, Remember The Pandemic? A Not-So-Timely Parent’s Guide to Global Catastrophe

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I’m 42 years old and I can say without the tiniest of doubts that Spring 2020 was the shittiest time I’ve ever experienced. The global pandemic, exacerbated by government responses that made a middle school math class boner look like a strategic plan, pushed the horizon line on a return to “normalcy” out until, well, basically forever.

But if you had kids during that time, you didn’t get to sit around perfecting your sourdough and binge-watching stuff that isn’t just songs and colors on a loop. You had to make life in that limbo seem as stable as possible for your kids, even if that meant taking the same walk in your neighborhood every day and trying to come up with different observations each time so your spouse didn’t get annoyed and rip someone’s mailbox out of the ground to stab you with the post.

If you’re like me, this all meant you probably kept a lot inside in an effort just to keep the shit on the rails. And since internal strife leads to questions, I simply asked myself the questions and doled out the answers because blogging is decidedly cheaper therapy.

Okay fine, but why the hell am I writing about this now? Let’s not act like post-COVID we collectively got our shit together to the point where we think we’ll never deal with a global catastrophe ever again — cough rapidly-advancing acute effects of climate change — cough cough.

So here you go, my retrospective look back at how I imposter-syndromed my way through the pandemic, just in case we need to do this all over again:

How did you explain coronavirus to your kids?

We sat them down and said this: There is a fast-spreading virus that’s threshing old people like a wheat crop. It’s as silent and invisible as the monsters in your closet, so it could infect you without you ever knowing — even in your sleep. There is no known cure or treatment. And there’s a chance if you get it and you live, you’ll have lifelong respiratory and cardiac issues. Who wants a cookie?!

Should I feel comfortable taking my family to a restaurant?

Hahahahahahahahahahahhaha — thank you, I needed that. Look, I know it’s uncool to answer a question with a question, but ask yourself this: How many strangers are you letting eat off your silverware right now and how much do you trust the parolee you’ve hired to clean up afterwards?

How do I politely ask people I genuinely like if they’ve been fucking idiots during all of this?

Ah yes, the initiation of the first socially-distanced hang with friends you haven’t seen since the beginning of the end. It’s best to just be direct. Take the lead and lay out the ground rules. “Just meet us out back. BYOB. If you have to use the bathroom, don’t worry, we put up an elegant privacy screen right next to the shed.”

Or you could just stalk their Facebook page and if you can’t tell the difference between their Summer 2020 and Summer 2019 pics, say you couldn’t taste your breakfast and need a rain check.

What should I do about school?

Do whatever you want. The decision will ultimately be made for you before Homecoming when this shit causes full-scale shutdowns again. Think I’m overshooting that? Let me ask you this: Have you seen kids interact? Sharing saliva is a feature, not a bug.

Am I fucking crazy?

I don’t know, man. Probably yeah.

Is it harmful to let my kids watch the news?

Yes, but only during the pharmaceutical commercials. Try getting a four year old to stop saying erectile dysfunction during a FaceTime with grandma.

Is it bad that my kids are asking me about functional alcoholism?

What are they, some kind of narc?

Seriously, have I lost my mind?

Nah, wiping off a watermelon with Clorox Wipes it fine. Everything’s fine. Wait, where the fuck did you find Clorox Wipes?!

Should I worry about screen time?

I let my two year old watch an episode of something he refers to only as “Count Mickula” on a loop while I wrote this on my phone. Disney+ and Apple are fully at the wheel here, friends.

What about vacation?

Fuck it, just go and don’t tell anyone. When you’re tan as hell on the next work Zoom, say it was a staycation and you passed out in the yard while the kids binged Count Mickula (I swear I will find out what that is).

When can I tell my kids this will all be over?

November 3rd, 2020, according to everyone on Facebook from my high school who I hated for irrational reasons then, but concrete ones now.

Am. I. Fucking. Nuts?

Dude, yes. But think about how messed up your parents are. They let you ride your bike to another state when you were 7. You’re fine.

Do you notice any changes in your kids throughout all of this?

I find that children have an acute awareness of nearly everything that happens around them, no matter how seemingly aloof they are at the time. A turn of phrase you think went unnoticed that they randomly drop into conversation later. An unprompted question about why the police “didn’t help that man.” A drawing that impossibly depicts a fleeting moment from a road trip.

So it’s inevitable that this will impact them in immeasurable ways. Will they have intimacy issues? Will they distrust authority figures? There will be entire fields of study dedicated to this.

But my boys, who are four and two, have never stopped farting, screaming, and hurting themselves with frightening regularity throughout the pandemic. They still scream “DADDAAAY!” and kamikaze hug me whenever I come back from being gone for five minutes. They don’t eat their food and they don’t want to go to bed, just like before. And they still surprise me every day with weird, hilarious stuff like describing their poop in horrifying detail (a brown ball and a skinny snake today, btw).

Somehow, that gives me hope.