Lessons Learned During Confinement
Life has changed drastically since this pandemic, quarantine, confinement and/or contingency began. There’s a before and an after. We have learned new words, new habits, and new technology, among others.
I used to struggle to remember, when I left home, to check that I had brought my keys, my glasses, and my cell phone. Once I saw a meme that compared it to kids playing “Head, shoulders, knees and toes.” Well now, I have to add “face mask” to the list! More than once I got to a store and realized I couldn’t enter without one, and had to go home. Oh yes, for some of you that means adding a face shield or perhaps special protective glasses and even plastic gloves… “your costume.”
I’ve learned a few new words. One of them is comorbidity, not a very nice word. Morbid, perhaps? One of those additional health complications that makes you all the more susceptible to dying from the coronavirus. In Spanish I learned that aforo is the term for the capacity of a place, as some places are now allowed to open only with a certain capacity of customers or churchgoers.
We’ve all adopted new habits, or at least tried to. Wear a mask. If it’s washable, remember to wash it. Have a special mat at the entrance; keep it damp; wipe feet upon entering. Spray or wipe groceries off when you come home. Wash your hands a zillion times a day. Money laundering or its cousin has even become a habit for some! Ah yes, this also has meant learning to keep a variety of sanitizing substances on hand. Then there’s habits to unlearn, especially touching your face… I’m not doing too well on that one!
Then too: Don’t see friends. If you do, don’t get close to them. At most, rub elbows and then keep your distance. Be ready to repeat everything you say twice when your muffled words don’t quite communicate. That’s enough to social-distance you back to messaging for clarity!
At stores and malls, there’s a whole ritual to go through. Find the “right” entrance where the mat is, and be ready to get scanned and squirted. To be more correct, that means getting your temperature taken and having an all-too-big gob of gel squirted on your hands. When in doubt, smoosh some of it onto the shopping basket handles. In the produce section of the supermarket, be ready to take twice as long as your rub plastic bags with your fingers forever to get them open, trying to avoid sticking your fingers under your mask to lick them. Keep your distance from other shoppers as possible; figure out where the “spacey” lineup at the cashier ends.
Oh yes, the technology! We knew about Facebook Live, but many had never experienced Zoom and its cousins. Combine that with YouTube, where some FL sessions can be watched after the live video. Most of us have attended meetings, conferences, classes, or church services with some of these. Some friends were not familiar with the verb “to mute” as meaning to silence your microphone. Then all too often participants start talking and we have to remind them to “unmute” their mikes! Umm, I don’t think that one’s in the dictionaries yet. Others of us learned to quit showing our video on Zoom the whole time, whether because we hadn’t brushed our hair, changed out of PJ’s, finished breakfast… or because we occasionally dozed. A lot of people haven’t learned to use the Zoom chat, I’d say. And so on!
Others have had a major learning curve to practice home office and distance schooling. Each of those is an essay in itself, but as a writer and translator I’m used to working from home, sharing documents on Google Drive and so on. Still, I’ve seen the kiddos challenged by figuring out how to communicate and learn via a variety of technologies. SO glad I’m no longer teaching!
The whole “stay at home” thing has meant discovering new activities to while away the time. In my case, it has meant courses on writing, online teaching, sociolinguistics, and superfoods, several of these with the fantastic FutureLearn courses, which can be taken free or at a cost, for certification. I’ve seen that others have gotten more involved in family board games, puzzle making, or even creating videos together. My grandkids and I made a video with Legos about “David and the COVID-19 Giant”!
Not a few have had to reinvent themselves as they seek new sources of income. Though I wasn’t looking for one at all, I fell in love with artisanal Mexican face masks, embroidered and so on, and ended up finding a fair variety to offer to friends and even other clients. We all know someone who has gotten into things like food delivery, sanitizer or mask sales. Musicians, private tutors and speakers have in many cases branched out into offering online classes… and so on.
Much as we never planned for this to happen, much less hoped to learn these new habits and activities, it’s been proof that we can always learn to survive in the midst of change!
