I want to share a couple of bright spots with you. These are all anecdotes that have happened in my household over the past two months because of the Covid-19 lockdown.
“I’m working on a pizza!”
One day I stepped outside to check the mailbox or something. My neighbor, an elderly lady who can’t hear very well, was outside in her driveway as well, and we spotted each other across the street. I wanted to walk closer to her to talk, but decided I’d better keep my distance. After all, she was high-risk. So we’d just have to be loud.
“How are you doing?” I asked as I waved.
“What?”
“HOW ARE YOU DOING?”
She barely made out what I was saying, but responded, “I’m making soup! It’s good soup weather.”
I agreed that it was, and then tried to relate:
“THAT’S GREAT! I’M WORKING ON A PIZZA!” In my desperation to help her hear me, I stuck my arms out in a circle in front of me as I said “pizza.”
She yelled back, “YOU?!”
“YES,” I hollered.
Then she said, “CONGRATULATIONS! I KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN; I JUST DIDN’T KNOW WHEN!”
Suddenly horrified that we were not talking about the same thing at all, I tried to backtrack.
“NO… A PIZZA! I’M MAKING A PIZZA!”
“That’s great, hon!!” she said, as she disappeared into her house.
I guess that’s how rumors get started.
“What size?”
We’ve had a close friend sheltering in place with us during this season as she transitions back to the States from overseas. One morning she was out on the front porch with her coffee.
Meanwhile inside the house, I was having a text conversation with a neighbor who was on his way to the grocery store and offered to pick up groceries. I asked him for a bag of flour if he could find any. (He’s an engineer and probably a little bit on the spectrum, so I specified that I’d like flour made from wheat, but any kind would be fine- unrefined, bleached, whatever. I even sent him a picture of the last bag of flour we had in case that would give him some helpful starting parameters to look for.) He agreed to look.
A couple minutes later, my friend (who is blonde and much taller than me) had a frightening experience on the porch. A “random” car passing by slowed way down, rolled down the window, and the unfamiliar man driving the car shouted to her,
“WHAT SIZE?”
After he repeated the question, she finally stammered, “Uh… I don’t know what you’re asking.”
My neighbor driving the car pulled away slowly with his head out the car window, staring back at her all the way down the block.
“How are you doing?”
After the lockdown started, I had to switch my ESL class to Zoom. It was hard enough trying to communicate with my precious group of very-beginners in person when we could interact with charades, but holding the class online brought a whole new set of challenges.
One morning I tried to open the class with a basic question: “How are you doing?”
One of my brightest students formulated the answer in his head, then confidently said, “I am study English.”
I decided we’d better stop to clarify, so I explained that how are you doing is about feelings, and what are you doing is about actions. Knowing the class probably wouldn’t catch my explanation either, I held up one hand like an imaginary sock puppet and acted it out.
[Left hand talking like duck mouth:] Hello! WHAT are you doing?
[Right hand pops into view, now talking:] I am eating breakfast!
[Left hand:] Hello! HOW are you doing?
[Right hand:] I am fine, thank you!
My student said “oh, oh…” and nodded so I was pretty sure he had it. I tried again.
“So… how are you doing?”
He gave me a big grin as he said, “I am study English!”
Intentional communication
At the beginning of our shelter in place, I had some concerns about having Erik work from home long-term. I love having him around, but it does change my daily routine a bit, and I wanted to make sure this arrangement was going to be OK for both of us.
As we stood in the kitchen one afternoon, I said, “You know, I think this is going to be fine, but maybe after a week or so we can pause and re-evaluate how this is going with you working from home. Let’s both try to communicate intentionally about adjustments we might want to make, OK?”
He just stood there with a peculiar look on his face.
“What?” I asked.
Suddenly his eyes snapped back into focus and his face broke out into a proud smile. He said,
“I just farted for like seven seconds.”
I’d love to hear your stories too. Feel free to use the comments! I miss you, friends!
Just now getting caught up with this one. I think there could be a whole website of amusing stories from adjustments to people’s digestive and excretory routines when working from home together… 🙂
haha these are great! Caitlin and I have a list of “comedic gold.”
Thanks!
I want to hear them! 😉
Here’s one: “Summer body?! What is that? Start prepping for your fall body! You have more time to prep for your oversized sweaters!”
Hi Hannah, this is partly a response to your previous post (Happy Yeaster), partly responding to your invitation to share stories… I loved yours!
One thing that carried me through the time of social distancing in the Netherlands, was the giant cookies weekly appointment with a friend of mine. (NB: This is legal here, as we have an intelligent lock-down, meaning we can use our common sense. That’s nice, until you get a 400 euro fine, for not everybody’s common sense is making the same judgement. Fortunately it did not happen to me.)
So at the beginning of the lock-down, my friend and I met outside her apartment block on a bench for lunch. The bench was long enough for us to be safe from each other’s saliva droplets. Each brought her own lunch and a drink. My friend also brought a box of giant cookies she baked, to share. Safe of not, we enjoyed the cookies and chatted happily for several hours. The following week we met again at the same bench for lunch. This time I brought the cookies, which of course now had to be a certain size to qualify. After that we heard from someone that the bench in front of an apartment block is not the best place to talk: the acoustics is such that people on the balconies can hear all you are saying. Well, that was embarrassing… we had shared a lot during those hours.
So the following week we found a place in a park and made sure noone was behind the bushes. I had made beer bread for the first time in my life and – proud of myself – wanted her to taste it. She thought it was her turn to bring cookies, so we had a lot to eat that day. We kept meeting weekly and talk, replacing the lunch with cookies. When you speak with each other that regularly, there is less to catch up on and more depth and peace, which we both have profoundly enjoyed. I would say to my husband: I’m going to the park to eat giant cookies again and he knows it’s my life-line. My friend and I do not block this time in our agenda, we just see what the weather’s like and what other engagements we may have. This week I sent her a Whatsapp message: have you baked anything? She said no. She made a no-bake granola bars. So that’s what we had for lunch that day.
Thanks for sharing that, Basia! I love that so much! It’s so good just to get to see a friend’s face in real life and talk, isn’t it? And it’s good you were able to finally break the cycle of the giant cookies too. 😉 That’s really sweet what you said about having less to say and more peace. I’ll be thinking about that one!