Anniversary
This is the one-year anniversary of the day Covid Changed Everything, where Jeff and I were personally concerned. Or, to put it another way: exactly one year ago was the last time Jeff and I left home for what we thought would be a typical forgettable afternoon running pre-covid errands -- though before we'd finished we knew otherwise. Our plan was: first, go to Target (the nearest one is a bit of a haul, from our place); next, visit a couple of thrift stores in Target's general neighborhood; lastly, go to Kroger for the week's grocery run.
The visit to Target was exactly normal, except we both noticed and exclaimed over how the paper-products aisle was completely empty. (Luckily, we didn't need anything from that aisle anyway.) Then we stopped at a Goodwill and both walked away empty-handed -- but as we exited the store, Jeff checked something on his phone, then told me "DeKalb [our county] just closed the schools for two weeks."
Because of that announcement, I wasn't too surprised when we got to Kroger (which is also the "anchor store" of a fairly large strip mall) and saw that almost every spot in the strip-mall parking lot was taken -- before that, I'd never seen the lot more than half-full even on the eve of Thanksgiving and other "mega-grocery-shopping" days.
Now, after a year of living in corona-world, if we saw such a parking lot we would immediately turn around and go home. But on March 12, 2020, what we did instead was find a vacant spot in the Siberia part of the lot and go inside the store, which was so crowded, the checkout lines stretched from the cashier's stands all the way to the back of the store, before doubling up upon themselves. (I know this because Jeff and I entered that densely crowded building and personally inspected the size of the crowd and those lines -- another thing we would never do now even with masks on, let alone bare-faced as we were one year ago tonight.)
posted by Jennifer Abel at 4:19 PM
3 Comments:
For me it was going into the Harp's grocery in a nearby town of 2300 people around March 15, and seeing enormous lines at every register. The shelves had been stripped of almost all dried legumes, rice, etc. Since then all my grocery shopping has either been for delivery or no-contact pickup.
St. Patrick's Day. The Governor shut down the bars and restaurants before the festivities got started. My employer told those that could work remotely to do so the day before. I remember feeling fearful heading to the grocery the next weekend. Covid had just appeared in my state mere days before, but the news made things seem dire. Turns out they were.
I've waded through the miasma of the last year, pretty much just running essential errands. My only social contact being with my disabled adult daughter, bringing her groceries and sharing a takeout meal once a week.
I will get my first vaccine in 9 days. I am beyond excited to do so. I am in a high risk group for severe disease, and look forward to protection from that.
I have no idea when I'll get vaccinated; I'm in Phase 2 (which really ought to be called Phase 5, since Phase 1 has four subcategories), and as of now there's no indication when Phase 2 Georgia residents will even be allowed to make an appointment.
In retrospect, thinking back to my actions in Kroger the night of March 12 last year -- "Hey, the grocery store is more densely packed than I've ever seen before! Lines stretching all the way to the back of the store! Good thing we already have food at home, because we definitely don't want to wait in those super-long lines now, especially during a pandemic." [pause] "Let's both of us stroll through the super-crowded store anyway, merely to notice and remark upon the remarkably density of the crowd."
We were stupid, but lucky -- at that point there were only a handful of cases in the Atlanta metro area if I recall correctly, and I guess none of those unfortunate pioneers were in the same Kroger as us, that night.
About a week later, Jeff and I had out first experience of waiting in line before being allowed to enter a store (Home Depot, where we bought mesh screens and outdoor carpets to bugproof our patio/balcony, now that we knew we'd be spending a LOT more time at home).
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