Note to Flipside: 10/25/24

Note to Flipside: 10/25/24

Should I say bless you?

You. You are a pariah.

Should I say bless you? Gesundheit? Good salutations, you drippy-nosed unclean vermin.

You, who may have premeditated this mass exposure event. You, who deem it acceptable to spread this nasty virus you are awkwardly pretending you don’t have.

Yesterday, you showed up in the office in a fluffy white ski hat as if September were February, or as if you were from Brazil and played in a punk rock band and your style somehow surpassed mine. So what if you talk to yourself, murmuring as if no one can hear you narrating your own podcast? That doesn’t distract from the redness around your eyes or the crusting around your nostrils. Then today, you arrive and prance around in an N95 mask, eyes darting to and fro, embarrassed by the obviousness of yesterday’s callousness — but now silently and proudly stating you’re a selfless citizen, doing whatever it takes to keep us from succumbing to your viral load.

Two decades ago, a different story might have unfolded. Tuesday at 9 AM, three employees would arrive to the office slow as sloths, mucous coated, in a feverish-pale-pasty-ass-egg-white-skin state of being. They’d slump at their computers, miserable, but oh so committed to the cause, as co-workers would swing by to meet your germs with a good morning high five.

You got a cold or something? You look like shit mate, ha ha, do you need some more tissues, get the ones with aloe, btw you still coming to drinks tonight, oh and you’re needed for a six hour meeting starting in 15 minutes. Now get to it, have you finished that report, how about we all cram sardine-tight into a windowless and unventilated boardroom with a dozen other coworkers?

It’s all good because unless you’re dead, you might as well come in, one might murmur in the lunchroom; going home only occurs if you sweat through your clothes or cough so hard you snap off a tonsil. Two days later and people would chuckle when they heard Nancy caught whatever Billy had; apparently she got carried down the back stairwell, plopped over someone’s shoulder like a scarecrow being led to the field.

Speaking of which, shall we have a yap about the dreaded norovirus? Maybe your office happens to be an airport, each week you hop no less than two flights, your life comprised of lounges and delays and gate agents and annoying people who watch videos with their phones unmuted. You step across the threshold of a 737, wondering if this would be it — if this was the big one. If this was the moment you’ve been harboring anxiety about for ten out of 60 minutes of every single day for the past five years straight. No not airline safety you boob, we’re talking about catching an uncontrollable stomach bug before a long flight.

Once in India I was snared in this very trap, likely from the lettuce, because the 4-star hotel I booked wasn’t fancy enough to install their own vertical farm pumping bottled water into the veggies. I paced outside the terminal in a state of cheek-numbing nausea, before boarding a 90-min flight to Udaipur. Once seated, I dozed and awoke from a fever dream feeling as if the plane was landing — my watch showing just 15 minutes remaining in the flight.

I’d made it!

Suddenly I was jolted awake, and realized I’d been hallucinating and we were mere minutes into the flight. Panic arrived in skin tingles, my mouth a sandpaper pocket, my stomach lurching toward both exits. I stumbled over the seat backs, touching arms and crashing food trays, then locked myself in the bathroom, the walls slick and decrepit, like someone had dumped a wet ashtray everywhere. There I whirled and sprayed like a Turkish devil and, once emptied, lo and behold, realized someone has stolen all of the tissues and toilet paper.

But what’s a world-defining pandemic to reset the ol’ anxiety gauge? Forget bad food, now one secretly wonders whether there are UV-C light systems shining into ductwork to kill pathogens; or you might incessantly Purell your hands and the back of your neck (one can never be too safe). And we all know that person who has taken so much Paxlovid they now have a monthly recurring subscription.

We know of the NIH and of brain fog and variants. Of bivalent boosters and doubtful deniers. Of gut microbiomes and data lags and waves and the ladder of infectiousness. Sneezes are immediately reflected as mere allergies, a plea of innocence; a cough is stifled and reaching for Advil is outwardly justified as an oncoming migraine.

Today we have returned to shared office spaces, mostly in hushed voices, telling people to stay home if they so much as burp. This, of course, is a double edged sword, because being home requires you to still arrive pleasantly on zoom, camera off, half-napping, half-slacking, kinda wishing you were in the office infecting all those other chumps lucky enough to not have this gunk.

Around the corner you hear someone sneezing and your hair stands on end. In the bathroom they’re blowing their schnozz like they’re trying to fill a balloon with air. The nerve, the absolute insanity, the selfishness, the lack of respect and…you know what, you’re just going to go tattle to the office manager. Maybe you absolutely lose it one morning when you catch them exiting an acoustic call booth coughing and sniffling and rubbing their drool on all the doorknobs. You shout at them with conviction, full of assumption of accusatory guilt. You shout loudly so the entire floor is aware,“hey, why are you in the office, you’re not SICK are you?”

Even though just last week — coming out of that very booth, feeling even more miserable than you had the day before, hoping no one noticed the puffiness that had resolved itself around your eye sockets or the sweat beading at your hairline — that person happened to be you.

Originally posted on medium.com