From April 14th...
So, today is day two, the challenge is to write something that is deliberately bad. Not sure what that means exactly. Are we writing a grammatically bad sentence? Are we to write something that just makes one cringe like the examples I saw today of writing men have done describing women that are not even remotely realistic? There’s a joke I’ve seen regarding how the year 2020 is a short story that’s been written by a fourth grader. My fourth grader took massive offense to that. But when you look at it, it does seem like this year has been more of a disaster movie than anything else. My sister keeps saying the world is going to end because we now have the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I don’t know about that but this has not been a good start to what was supposed to be a shiny brand new decade. I wonder if that’s what people in the 1930’s thought too.
Going back to bad writing. My ex-husband lives in South Korea and occasionally shares some of the cringeworthy bits of writing he’s seen on labels where they try to use English. On one hand, I feel I’m being mean to even make mention of it because I know that English is a difficult language. On the other hand, if you want to find bad writing, translations are definitely the place to find them. So, he bought a thing of grapes. The package is labeled “fresh raisins”. Uh...okay. Below that is the following: eating right through the full and healthy life for born in an attempt to protect the brand. Uh...say WHAT?! I don’t even know how to figure out what that is supposed to say. And that’s not the first time I’ve seen writing like that but it was definitely the most recent. I have no doubt that it has to do with the way Korean is written vs the way English is written as far as sentence structure and whatnot but still, I can’t even begin to make sense of that sentence. And this is a label on an item that you would buy in the store.
So, realizing now that we’ve all been schooling/working from home for four weeks now. It has definitely been a challenge and my youngest Isabelle seems to be feeling it the most. She doesn’t really have anyone to talk to or play online with when her sister is busy and I’m working so she’s having to spend a lot of time alone. Her dad being 6000 miles away doesn’t help. And with it looking more and more like school won’t resume this year, she got a little emotional. I can’t blame her. I would be too. Something like this is hard on a kid her age. They should be out and about, meeting up with their friends and playing outside at recess and they can’t. The weather is very slowly (I live in Wisconsin afterall), getting warmer and nicer and yet they can’t get out and really do anything. Parks are closed. They can’t meet with their friends. It’s looking more and more like this will continue on through the summer months. At the very least, you can’t plan anything because there’s no end date. Yes, the current stay at home mandate is set to expire next Friday but slowly, articles are coming out saying that this will likely not be the case so it’s just a matter of time before it gets extended.
Eventually though, this will all end at some point. It has to. Obviously, we can’t spend the rest of our lives in this limbo so there has to be an end to this. We just don’t know when that will be and we don’t know exactly how it will come about. I don’t think anyone really knows. The president sure doesn’t. He keeps saying we’ll be back in business by such a date and everyone then has to tell him that that is not likely. But what is needed to get us all back to normal is not a sure thing either. There are some ideas out there such as being able to test more people and having more supplies. The goal is to flatten the curve and keep hospitals from being overwhelmed but how can that be kept up for the long term? The virus has not gone away and is not likely to go away anytime in the near future. People will continue to be susceptible to getting this because no one has natural immunity to yet. And people who have gotten it even are not necessarily immune from getting it again. Letting everyone get it at once though is not an option either. Too many people will die if that happens.
So we wait and survive each and every day. I’m very thankful I’m still working and I have a job and money coming in. Not everyone is fortunate and I’m also very thankful that my job is not one where I”m having to interact with people in person. This virus cannot be transferred over the phone so I’m safe at home so long as I stay at home. That’s not always easy because there’s food that needs to be bought and I do have necessary appointments I need to keep but for the most part, I’m extremely fortunate in my situation. Not everyone is and those challenges are real. This is a very difficult time for a lot of people and not knowing when it is going to end doesn’t make that any easier.
Once all of this is over, I do wonder if we will all go back to the way things were or if things will be different and if so, will those differences be better or worse? The Black Death, if I recall, brought in the renaissance and ended the dark ages. So, what changes, if any, will we see once this is all over and done with? Perhaps that’s something to be explored...
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