A drop of sweat pearled on my forehead.
Hiss.
Swoosh.
In perfect slow-mo, I saw the bottle cap flying through the air before landing on the steaming hot tiles of our garden terrace. After a moment of staring at it silently, totally in awe of the magnificent acrobatic manouvre I had just pulled off, Nadia’s voice got through to me. Apparently I’d irritated her enough after my enigmatic behavior concerning the simple act of opening a beer bottle for today and she started nagging for me to pick up the cap and throw it in the bin. Really, that woman wouldn’t know Art when ‘The Sound of Silence’ was playing at volume 100.
…My apologies for that Simon & Garfunkel part. It’s a crappy joke, I know. It’s been almost two years since I’ve written anything and I need a moment to get back into it.
Or two.
Probably two.
Bear with me.
See, the irony was that I’d just opened a bottle of Corona beer. You know, that delightfully tasteful Mexican, corn-brewn beer that is best enjoyed when you’re out in town with your poser friends, going for ‘drinkies and dancies’ and picking up babes while listening to crappy, uninspired music that’s just too loud to prevent a genuinely interesting conversation from ever happening either among eachother or between you and said babes, all while sweating profusely with every sip you take from your Corona, hoping you won’t choke on the lime slice stuck in the bottleneck that’s just waiting to switch locations to get stuck in, which would just inevitably prove to everybody that you don’t just look like a dandy loser, but that you, without question, are one. Thus eliminating every chance that you might have had at the beginning of the night of ever hooking up with that one babe you’ve been eyeing from the moment that you entered the venue, knowing that said babe also noticed you and that she’s not too sure if you’re a potentially interesting conversationalist or just a dude with his brain below the belt who’s just looking for a night of heavenly pleasure, waiting to caress those magnificent curves, while…
*cough*
Not the point. The beer, unfortunate as it may be, shares its name with a new type of disease that is flooding the world. COVID-19, it’s called. Commonly referred to as ‘Coronavirus’. Sounds like something from ‘Terminator’, right? Imagine saying that in the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
You added a ‘niaarrghhh’ to that, didn’t you? AMAGAD, you SO did! You totally did! /fanboyhighfive! #squeee
Anyway, I’m deviating from my point again. Apologies. It will happen again. Bearwithmah.
There’s been one hell of a fuss about this disease. For example, leaders of large, prominent countries denied it being a serious threat to the health of the population. Y’know. Just… leaders. Hair that looks like a badly knitted wig, carroty skin color, weird accent, absolutely nothing up the attic, weird handshaking manners, named a tower after themselves, let more companies go bankrupt than they made succesful. Oh, and they only say stupid things on twitter, are the laughing stock of every other country in the world but are treated with care because they’re like a spoiled, fat kid with an index finger hovering above the big, red button that says ‘Nuke the fuck outta them’ on it.
There’s probably billions-and-billions-and-billions-and-billions-and-billions of people fitting that description. Most likely fake news, too. idkwhatever, /care. I’m not about to get sued. I’ll let you figure it out.
So yeah, it’s big.
The fuss.
And it’s bad.
The disease.
But there’s a bit of good to it, as well: It evidently takes a global pandemic to make us realize what the most important things in the world are.
Very important: Getting drunk in bars with said poser friends, for example. Even more important: concerts, festivals and other brilliantly crafted excuses to get embarrassingly drunk, high or otherwise completely fucked up. Don’t forget those. Oh, and eating out instead of dining at home. Or having coffee in that one trendy place where all of the baristas have man-buns instead of at your own breakfast table. God forbid.
All that nonsense about health. It’s perfectly normal for people to die. People die all the time. If you see someone getting stabbed to death on the streets you don’t go up to the perpetrators to stop them from killing someone, right? They’d have died eventually, anyway. It’s the natural course of things.
Well, you might consider scaring off said stabbers. You’d be hailed like a hero in tomorrow’s newspapers. Probably nation-wide, too. Doing simple things like keeping distance, staying at home, shopping economically and not flocking the supermarkets, buying toilet paper in bulk?
There’s no thrill.
No challenge.
People’d think you’re just one of the stupid, boring sheeple out there. No. Nope. NOWAI. That would be the world’s end.
There goes the cap; in the bin. A moment later I was greeted by Cookie, who’s been staying with us ever since the coronavirus pandemic started. He entered the kitchen while rubbing his stomach area with relief. The barbecued meat we had apparently didn’t go so well with the home-made ‘mother’s recipe’ salad he’d made and had been bragging about for the entire day.
Different times, same old Cookie. We’ve known eachother for 25 years now, ever since high school, and we’d never been part of the globe-trotting, jetset-life, thrill-seeking elite. We’ve always been quite comfortable being stay-at-home, boring sheeple.
I reached into the fridge and handed him a beer.
Hiss.
Swoosh.
Clink.
Just doin’ our part.