Unprecedented Times

by ZAHRA KHAN

I have some thoughts on the social effects of COVID-19 without droning on about politics, vaccines, or quarantine snacks.

I can start by saying I lied. The only reason I won’t mention my quarantine snacks is that they have prematurely disappeared and there is nothing more to discuss. I mean, they are named “quarantine snacks” because they are excuses to buy snacks because of oops, a pandemic, or oops, a hurricane or oops, Publix had BOGO on Salt and Vinegar Cape Cod Kettle Cooked Chips again for the fourth time this month. It can happen.

With my snacks gone, one of the things that annoy me most about the pandemic is how easily the phrase “unprecedented times” became a cliché. This is aside from the fact that The New York Times consistently compares this pandemic to the one 100 years ago. If you’re like me or Cruella de Vil, you’ll recall it more accurately ended 101 years ago in 1919.

I would’ve thought there was a timeline for that sort of thing. Like, there would've had to have previously been a surplus of cringe-worthy pandemic movies over abusing the phrase leading up to 2020. Like how early 2000s romcoms over casted Katherine Heigl. You know her character: She’s a Type A workaholic who falls in love with a cynical jerk (played by Gerard Butler, Josh Duhamel, or James Marsden). Although at first, neither can stand to be in the same room. Eventually, through their heated arguments, profound fundamental disagreements and the unlikely situation that forced them together they...fall in love? This is why I am single. I expect Katherine’s respective experiences, The Ugly Truth, Life As We Know It and 27 Dresses, to play out in my life. I can’t help but to relate, though: Her characters are so infamously and hopelessly single, Heigl should change her last name to “Singl.”

The point is, these romcoms took years to build up a predictable archetype for the genre much like Hallmark Christmas movies. Except with the phrase “unprecedented times,” it didn’t take 15 movies featuring a loving small-town inn owner and a skeptical big-city lawyer who hates Christmas for its originality to expire.

The pandemic also poses other trivial issues and since I am petty, I will focus on those. One of the many minor inconveniences includes face masks. The other day at the pool, a lifeguard recognized me and shouted my name from behind the check-in desk. My ears are still ringing. You think I’d be able to handle it since he was speaking in my volume, but you see, I am a hypocrite. I am annoyed by any sound that isn’t produced by my mouth or Josh Groban’s.

I only later found out he was in fact, not an assailant, but my friend. He was wearing sunglasses, a wide straw hat and a face bandana and who, by the way, expected me to recognize him. I’d like to emphasize that after the incident, I use the term "friend" loosely. You can’t blame me for it either: Had you taken that exact scenario out of context; glasses, hat, wild west hanky, and put him in front of a 7/11 cashier’s counter pre-COVID, it would have been a completely different look. Yet the jump isn’t that far from surprise hello to aggravated robbery.

After my swim, he struck up another conversation by approaching me head-on versus behind me, thankfully. He’s still too loud and this time, the sound drowns out in my head now that there’s pool water in my ears. His voice vibrates my brain like the music from a warehouse party. I’m outside of that warehouse headbanging, not to the music but in a vigorous effort to evict the water from my brain. It’s dangerous since I already can’t hear and now I’m top heavy since my head houses approximately enough water to fill up an Olympic swimming pool. Maybe I should see a doctor.

Update: I got Dr. Hilbelink’s voicemail so I did what it said “if this is an emergency” and hung up and dialed 9-1-1. In case you were curious, being annoyed at the general volume of life around you, isn’t an emergency. Needless to say, I am annoyed since my tax dollars aren’t being used properly. I mean, I would be if I paid taxes. I get away with it not because I’m mega-wealthy, only invest in non-taxable portfolios, hire a team of accountants to create an aggressive tax plan and own dirt on everyone at the IRS, but only because I’m just another broke college student. Oh, look at that: A well-established cliché, welcome.

Speaking of clichés, I like to reimagine all the Katherine Heigl movies set during 2020. Take 27 Dresses: All 27 weddings would have been switched to private Zoom ceremonies and James Marsden, the pessimistic wedding columnist, would’ve been laid off. They would’ve never met and Heigl would likely go back to her job at Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital treating patients for COVID-19 and engaging in whirlwind On-Call Room hookups.

TLDR; Masks protect the health of the people around you from COVID-19, even though they may facilitate aggravated crimes. I still watch the Hallmark Channel every holiday season and lastly, Cape Cod Kettle Cooked Chips are ruining my life.

Toodles,

Zahra