It’s been such a long road. Right? For a year we’ve struggled to hold it together in a world we hardly recognize, some days. Then, Mother Nature cackles hysterically as she adds on her own cosmic cataclysm: The Polar Vortex. Who ever heard of such?
Enough, already. If you are like me, you may think there are finally some cracks in the edifice. Maybe, after turning the collective brave face and trudging forward determinedly alongside everyone else these many months, we are losing it, at last. There are clues.
With a fond nod to David Letterman, G-ma presents:
Top 10 signs you are finally losing it in the COVID/Insurrection/Winter-we-can’t-believe-is-happening.
10. You persist in calling the cat by the name of her predecessor, who has been gone a full decade as of next month. Worse, you are seriously annoyed when she blithely ignores you.
9. You are practicing your limbo along with the animated characters in the Kroger “low, low, low” TV commercial. You haven’t fallen over backward yet, but close calls have occurred. It may be the most vigorous element of your daily exercise regimen.
8. You cry at the most unpredictable times. Like when the UPS driver who stops in the truck in middle of the street to allow you to cross safely in front of him. Or at the sound of your yoga teacher’s voice on Zoom, when you can hear that Zen really exists—somewhere else.
7. You make a trip to the grocery store ostensibly to dump off recyclable plastic bags, but really to see live people walking around in the parking lot.
6. You arise from your work chair as a strange sound gains volume in the house. Your mind plunges through a list of potential crisis options: An icicle broken through the roof, with snow tumbling down the hole? A broken pipe, gushing water? Alas, it is the water you just turned on for your hot tea, commencing to boil merrily on the stove.
5. You consume long, tortured minutes clicking on links of Facebook posts of friends honoring people who have died, under the false presumption that you knew and should remember them. You didn’t, and therefore you don’t.
4. You gaze out the window and reminisce about the early glory days of pro football when Joe Namath is on TV trying to get you to call the Medicare Help Line. It’s free!
3. It dawns on you there are two items on this list referring to TV commercials.
2. You don’t panic about your stock of provisions until you are out of two of the three Housebound Food Groups: chocolate, potato chips, and alcohol. (See No. 7; why didn’t I go inside the store instead of just walking around the parking lot, people-watching?)
AND the No. 1 indicator you might finally be losing it:
- The most exciting three words you hear all day are: THIS IS JEOPARDY!
