Social Distance

All crises add to our common lexicon, and soon we use novel phrases with a shared understanding, even when those idioms are seemingly contradictory.   Example?  Social Distance.  The very nature of sociability is closeness.  In my years between the 1940’s and 1980’s, meeting a friend involved a warm handshake and smile.  That evolved to hugging, polite kisses (as the French do), even between people I barely know.  Attend a museum opening of a new exhibition and prepare to be kissed by men who probably no longer enjoy kissing me any more than I welcome their whiskered greeting.  Being social demands intimacy

In this year of Coronavirus, the social thing to do is to stay away — one from another –and preferably six-feet apart while wearing a mask.  This past Friday evening we made a reservation at Finnriver Cidery where we met friends to make up a fewer-that-five table.  After washing our hands at the soap pump – local, home-brewed soap –our invitation was checked off at the entrance by a friendly masked host who ushered us to our sanitized table.

“Who was that masked man?”  If you are my age, your mind recalls The Lone Ranger on his white stallion riding off into the sunset after rescuing some oppressed homesteader.  Now that question is common as we try to recognize people by their squinting eyes peering over a face mask that hides any smile of familiarity.  Our friends laugh their muffled chuckles in agreement about efforts to use our eyes more expressively.  A wide-eyed greeting, through glasses and above the mask, or a squinty smirk of disapproval for a negative message? Hand dances may come back into fashion.

I agree that the six-foot and masked decrees are the best social expression after all.  If we are social, we care about others.  We seek what is common among us, and today that is a desire for a healthy community.  Let’s forget that the phrase is an oxymoron,  and instead value what it means to have a community embrace without touching.

The medium is the message. If the message comes from the governor’s office to mask up and stay apart that is an authoritative and respected message.Perhaps not so, if you don’t happen to like your governor, or the governor belongs to a political party with which you don’t identify.  Sad, but true, communicating emergencies connotes urgency depending on who sends out the warning.  Hard to think if we get the next big earthquake and warnings come from your unpopular government official so you stay exposed to falling structures.  Perhaps the shaking ground will prompt people to safety.

Marketing is everything.  The very humor of Finnriver’s sign exhorting us to stay a cow’s distance apart invites compliance.  There I was enjoying my veggie pizza and Apple Oak Cider while envisioning a heifer between my friend Kathryn and me.

Humorous signage reminds me of a No Trespassing sign on the barbed wire fence that surrounds a nearby cow pasture in Quilcene:  Warning: Don’t cross our Pasture  Unless You Can Do it in 6.8 Seconds  Our Bull Can Do it in Seven.  My imagination is engaged.  I can feel a bull’s snorting breath on my derriere.  Had I been inclined to take a shortcut through the rancher’s field, I dismiss the notion with a laugh.

Here’s another neologism:  The New Normal.  Perhaps you have used this one too.  It suggests our acceptance of practices molded by the pandemic.  It too is contradictory, as what we once considered “normal” is now abnormal.  Someone threw in the word “normal” instead of the new “behavior,” because we are all longing for “normality,” a state of being to which we can’t return.  With  a resigned sigh, we embrace “the new normal,” indicating acceptance.  Perhaps “embrace” is the wrong word here.  Since March, the only embrace I have allowed myself is for my husband and my cat.  I embraced my husband in March and four days later he showed Covid-19 symptoms, because I was unaware I had been exposed.  Yep, we needed a cow between us.

Author: Mary After Seventy

I am a retired teacher, poet, community volunteer View all posts by Mary After Seventy