Three years ago my neighborhood was eerily quiet. As COVID-19 cases began to rise, people were afraid to leave their homes. Fewer people were out walking, and even children were staying inside.
I was anchoring the TV news from my den. The station’s engineers had installed lights, a camera, and a “backpack transmitter.” I was reading the news from an iPad. Some days it worked, and other days I looked like the deer in the headlights.
This was one of the unhappiest periods of my life. Only a handful of people were allowed into the TV station, the bare minimum needed to keep it on the air. I missed my co-workers, our camaraderie, and the buzz of a busy newsroom.
My sadness only increased when I ventured out in public. Most restaurants were closed, supermarkets were populated by a handful of people wearing masks and gloves, and gas stations teased us with signs touting two dollar gas. All that cheap fuel, and nowhere to go.
The schools I usually covered were closed. Parents scrambled to find child care while teachers got a crash course in online education. Once in a lifetime proms and graduation programs were canceled. Churches had to adapt, hoping spiritual needs could be met remotely.
Photo Courtesy AJC
When baseball season finally started several months late, fans were locked out. The TV announcers called the game from their homes, watching on a screen just like we did. The networks used fake crowd noise, because the stands were populated by cardboard cutouts of people. “This better be over by football season,” we said. It was not.
As I look back on the columns I wrote in 2020, they remind me of my sadness. Those were days, months, and years we can never get back. Birthdays and holidays were spent without family. Those visits don’t come often enough, and one by one, they were taken away.
In the midst of this national crisis, we were unable to visit ailing friends and family members in hospitals and nursing homes. We were losing loved ones left and right.
National media influencers and the politicians they control saw an opening. They decided to use the pandemic as a tool to enrich themselves.
They pointed their cannons at medical researchers, scientists, and vaccines. A nation sorely in need of unity was divided by the anger-tainment industry. They promoted and incited fear, building viewership and raking in the cash. Sad to say, in the grand tradition of professional wrestling, they gave the people what they wanted: conflict. (This despite one network’s own admission that 90 percent of its employees, including their hosts, had been vaccinated: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/fox-corp-fully-vaccinated-anchors-b1920250.html)
In this (hopefully) post-pandemic world, I have very few reasons to be unhappy. I’m back at work. Gas isn’t two bucks a gallon, but it’s affordable, and there are plenty of places to go. For proof of that, take a look at recent Atlanta Braves games, Tennessee Titans games, Nashville Predator games, and pretty much any major college stadium or gym, and any racetrack. The stands are full, the parking lots are jammed, and we can cheer or jeer to our heart’s content.
Yet there is still so much anger, as if we have forgotten what life was like in 2020, when we prayed our lives would return to normal. In so many ways, our prayers were answered.
We can attend concerts again, sharing that sense of community we had missed so much.
Restaurants are open, but we are angry that food prices are up. And why aren’t there enough people to serve us? Wait. They want higher wages? The nerve of them!
To paraphrase the comedian Ron White, we have the right to be angry. I just don’t have the ability, or the desire.
Do we still have problems? You bet we do. The actions of China and Russia prove we live in an unsettled world. Our once-effective two-party political system has devolved into year-round Congressional gridlock, and the Tennessee Legislature has become The Greatest Show on Earth.
But compared to 2020, life is good. Despite the howls of the anger merchants, the government hasn’t taken your guns or your gas stove.
This week I’m going to a Braves game, cheering along with 40,000 others. Win or lose, I will not be angry.
