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Self-quarantining, Day 200

It’s fun until it isn’t

Jeffrey Denny

The unfolding coronavirus pandemic, while deadly serious and no laughing matter, is an introvert’s dream, as the gallows humor goes.

Fortunately, as we all do our part to help contain and control the spread, the internet is already viral with tips on how to enjoy staying at home.

But what if our quarantining goes beyond six months and leads to cabin fever? Looking ahead to the prospect, consider these 21 tips and insights:

1. When things get overly tense with spouse, and your marriage has turned into an electrified barbed-wire steel-cage wrestling match, and it will, don’t despair. Click on LegalZoom: Divorce Online|Ready to Download in 30 Mins. This is a real thing.
2. Without easy access to fresh produce, the hearty chunks of real carrot in stockpiled cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew can ward off scurvy and symptoms including ulceration of gums, tooth loss, peg leg and saying arrrggggh.
3. Social media is now your entire social life. Your Facebook friends have truly become your only friends. Finally! Much better than inventing excuses to avoid brunch, book club, BBQs and their kids’ birthday parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, etc.
4. Barbra Streisand was wrong: People, people who need people, aren’t the luckiest people in the world.
5. On Zoom work video conferences, assume colleagues stopped wearing pants at Day 100. Warning: It’s even more not cool to wink at your work crush. Focus on the PowerPoint or whiteboarding ideation.
6. No, the FedEx driver doesn’t want to come in for coffee or a beer or to play Minecraft or just hang out, especially if you say, “Please! I just need some human contact!”
7. You reminisce about the days of old when you wanted a new boo to cough or sneeze on you or share other bodily fluids.
8. You start to think “The Shining” is a webinar.
9. You’re now officially an INTP. While you still suck at math and World of Witchcraft, at least you’ll make people feel awkward around you.
10. As an “influencer,” you’re proud that you’ve been social-distancing way before it became a thing. Also, people have been social distancing you for a while because nobody really likes an “influencer.”
11. You advance your self-knowledge by confirming whether you’re a filthy slob or OCD by how extremely Hoarders or KonMari’d your place gets.
12. You discover reading. Books. Not just news feeds, FB posts, and HuffPo’s latest collection of “hilarious tweets from quarantined moms.” Or you’ve seen or binged everything remotely watchable and moved into the “25 worst movies on Netflix.” Starting with “The Kissing Booth,” which “Instead of being a coming-of-age movie about a woman who discovers her autonomy, [it] plays far more into sexist tropes and allows Lee and Noah to commodify Elle’s body….”
13. When your booze has run dry, and another cocktail hour has rolled around, mix yourself a Purple Drank (Sprite with a shot of Nyquil). But always drink OTC cold remedies responsibly.
14. If your muscles begin to atrophy from lack of physical activity, check under that mountain of clothes in the bedroom — there might be a Peloton or NordicTrak under there, the birthday present your mate helpfully/insultingly gave you three years ago and you “forgot about.”
15. Get to know eBay’s return and refund policy.
16. You realize the brilliance of the late comedian George Burns when he said, “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” Also realize they used to feel bad feeling the same way about you.
17. You finally heed Shakespeare’s Lear: “O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that” by not obsessively checking your 401(k) again.
18. After being holed up day after day glued to Fox News, you begin to obsessively blurt-tweet every unfiltered, ugly, reactionary, xenophobic, incoherent, self-owning thought that hijacks your amygdala and confirms you’re unhinged, just like the President of the United States.
19. You’re even more convinced by Fox “personalities” that the pandemic — and all the stern official declarations of public health emergency, containment shutdowns and other life-saving precautions, the market crash, and other mayhem — is a Democrat/mainstream media hoax hyping a common flu to cause “hysteria” and “panic,” politicize the spreading outbreak, impeach the president again, and turn America socialist. And it’s Obama’s fault.
20. Worst of all, you believe the president gave a powerful prime-time Oval Office speech that brought calm and confidence to the markets and the nation, and silenced his stupid jealous hateful critics once and for all. And also, the president clinched his reelection because through the pandemic, he demonstrated under crisis, the true test of national leadership, that he’s the stablest, genius-est, greatest president ever.
21. Finally, “You need to get out more” is no longer just an old funny quip, but a prescription sent by your online therapist. If you do get out, avoid crowds and wash your hands. And your elbows, just to make sure.

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer “working” from home.