People Are Alright

I’m a jerk. 

When the quarantine situation was in the very beginning of the trend to reverse back to normal life, I had to visit a dentist. Don’t forget you mask and gloves, the receptionist said when making an appointment for me by phone. “What are the gloves needed for?” I asked. “You’ve got that hand desinfection gel at the entrance.”

“Yes, you also must use gel,” answered the receptionist.

“And wear gloves over desinfected hands?” I put some sarcasm.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t get the logic here. So the gel doesn’t work?”

“It does.” 

“Then I can go without gloves?”

“I’m sorry but that’s the law,” she answered apologetically. I gave up.

At the office, I was cocky. I couldn’t help grumbling at the receptionist and didn’t wear gloves. She was restrained and polite to the end and pretended not noticing my hands were bare.

Seeing me so unusually uptight (I’m a calm disciplined person normally), my dentist asked empathetically, «You don’t like all this, do you?»

“Radically,” I answered with feeling.

She smiled. “Me too. But we can do nothing about it.”

I envy my wife. She gets fun out of the quarantine. Wish I could be like her but can’t figure out how. When in the evening I told her about my visit, she laughed: “So this is how ‘please don’t lock us down’ looks. They’re jumping out of their skin to save their jobs.”

I finally got it and felt so ashamed. It happens all the time: if today it seems that everyone but me are off gourd, tomorrow I’m certain to find everyone understood what was going on except me. Why I always screw up?

But after all, I’m glad. Glad because loosing faith in people makes me sick. It’s an immense relief to find they were alright after all.