Thursday, April 16, 2020

Overhead, as I shop, the announcer’s voice blasts from the supermarket speakers between “Take on Me” and “Funkytown.” It used to shout about sales and bargains. Now, it warns us that the Ministry of Health demands that we all wear masks and stand two meters apart. In the overly bright light, it feels less like a dystopian future that we might have envisioned a few months ago and more like those seen in British science fiction of the sixties. Almost everyone I see outdoors has a mask. Many people let them dangle below their chins, rapidly pulling them up over their faces when others approach. Some wear gloves. I don’t. Gloves stop my hands from healing. On the way home, I take an illustrated book of our city’s history from the top of a recycling bin. Two white-haired men raise the hood of a car on the side of the road and place a battery inside. A cat yowls as I pass it, but neither approaches nor runs away. Children play on a grassy lot across from my house. Their parents sit on a picnic blanket, watching them. One toddler throws a ball at another. It bounces off his head. He doesn’t seem to notice. The ball rolls down the street toward me. I stop it with my foot and try to kick it toward them. It drifts vaguely away. I bend over and give it a more definite swat with the book. The girl waits for the ball to reach her, grabbing it when it does. The parents call out their thanks. I smile, but realize that they can’t see that through the mask. I wonder if they’ll sanitize the ball now that a strange man’s shoes have touched it.