Sunday, April 19, 2020

STAY-AT-HOME Week 5: Dan and I Are Like Banksy

This week, I cleaned out my classroom for the summer and distributed my students' personal effects. We were given two hours, and I won't be back in my classroom until August.

I was doing alright until I started sorting the props for this year's spring musical, The Little Mermaid. The kids had brought several items from home for the musical, and I labeled them and put them in front of teachers' doors.

One of the sixth graders had left a note on one of the props: "For the Sailors ❤."

"That scene was looking so good . . . " I told my husband, Dan, who was helping me, as we walked back to my classroom one last time. That's when I started crying.


I came home to news updates on protestors from ultra conservative groups at the Capitol, defying stay-at-home orders, and pictures posted on Facebook of people gathering with family members and friends, not in their immediate households, because . . . MY RIGHTS!

With great freedom (and rights), comes great responsibility. Spiderman taught me that. Or was that "with great power?" Semantics.

Some of those MY RIGHTS protestors have asked why only the deaths have been reported. They say the US has a 98% COVID-19 recovery rate. Why isn't that being reported?

I don't even know if this statistic is current or accurate anymore, but let's consider a 98% recovery rate.

So that means there's a 2% death rate? Let's say you are at a party or in some sort of group where fifty people get sick with the virus. That means one person dies. That's not good.

This is a public health issue no matter what your gut/non-medical opinion tells you. #science

In other words, it's not all about you. That's actually in the Bible. Or you could watch Spiderman.


Boise is better at social distancing than some of our neighboring cities and communities to the [cough cough] west, but Dan and I still heard the following things while wearing face coverings on the Greenbelt.

Of course, the Greenbelt nearest our house ventures close to Eagle, a ritzy, conservative bedroom community. Make of that what you will [insert eye roll here].

"You gonna rob a bank?" an older gentleman asked us while his wife laughed at his amazing joke.

"No, but you're going to make into my blog," I called to him (when he was most likely out of earshot). "I'm kind of famous" if by famous, you mean my close friends and some of my family think my blog is awesome.

"That's impressive," another gentleman, running with his wife and another young adult male, said.

He may have been paying me a compliment, but I was feeling feisty.

"Just following the Governor's orders," I replied.

The woman scoffed at me, and I added, "Some of us have asthma."

I mean, it's fun to be ridiculed while exercising.


"Do you have your Banksy face covering?"

These are the things Dan and I say to each other now.

The other day, Dan and I went on a walk through our neighborhood, wearing our Banksy face coverings, of course.

The people wearing face coverings and practicing social distancing in our neighborhood were the hip, cool-looking, younger adults. I include Dan and I in that category (so maybe youngish to GenXish is a better description).

Let's be honest, the people not doing those things in our neighborhood and--ahem--in the rest of our state (dare I say, at the Capitol on Friday?) were not as hip and cool-looking as us.

Be hip and cool-looking like us.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

I love Banksy and you. Thanks for a great post. <3

Rebecca "Jill" Turner-Duggan said...

Aww . . . Thank you! Love you too! ❤️