Donut Holes
I can tell that this quarantine has gone on too long or at least long enough. It’s been seven weeks by my count and any way you slice it, that’s a long time to be at home. The problem is, I can’t reasonably expect any sympathy for that since the entire world considers staying at home the least troubling of the three choices. The first choice is to be sick with COVID-19 and no one is picking that alternative. It sounds and looks horrible even if you are on the better end of the spectrum. Because the bad end is really bad. It doesn’t get much worse than being unable to breathe and having to be intubated or rolled onto you stomach to clear your lungs. Even if you are never in the ICU or hospital, you hear so many horrible stories about this thing taking quick turns for the worse that I’m sure its hard to stay optimistic or light-hearted during your special 14-21 day infection period.
The second choice is that you could be an essential employee or even front-line responder. If you are a healthcare worker its as bad as it gets. The story that should blow all of our minds is the one of the Columbia Presbyterian ER physician that went home after recovering from her own bout with Coronavirus and killed herself because she was so distraught by the life and death triage events taking place every day in the ER and the shear number of deaths she had to preside over. But not all of those situations are as dramatic as that. But people who are essential are doing anything except relaxing. People all over from the grocery sales business to the package delivery business are all feeling overworked and harried. And the very nature of their business has them getting closer to virus exposure than any of us would choose to do. They can PPE themselves to the hilt, but their risk of exposure is simply greater each and every day.
And then there are the rest of us who are staying at home pretty much all the time. Half of us are in the WFH (working from home) mode to some degree or another. Don’t kid yourself, everyone in the WFH category wonders about five times a day if their business will be able to continue to support their WFH lifestyle. The other half are simply OOW (Out of Work). Whether they are furloughed, laid-off or just plain fired, the thrill of spare time and “I can do better anyway” thinking has worn thin after seven weeks and most are seriously wondering where their next gainful employment is likely to come from in a world with 26 million other people out there trying to hustle their next job. Even if you are retired or were going to retire anyway, the serious dent in your retirement portfolio or the pressure your employer-sponsored plan has been put under in these stressful times has suddenly redefined prudent retirement math. And of course, people of retirement age are more vulnerable and can point to a direct correlation between age, exposure and death.
All of these choices basically suck. We all know there are some people that are doing well in the pandemic even if they are doing nothing wrong or societally adverse. They seem few and far between. But some businesses are simply in greater demand during these challenging times. Some of those are providing much needed goods and services and so long as they are not price-gouging, they deserve whatever they are getting. Others have either had the foresight or the fleetness of foot to be positioned well for the new world that is developing from our new strange world. Unfortunately, it will take most people and most businesses several months to reposition themselves for ultimate survival and even longer for ultimate prosperity.
A few weeks ago, more or less coinciding with the peak of the infections and deaths in the United States, Kim and I were on a program to limit our excursions to once per week to minimize our exposure. It didn’t feel burdensome at the time to comply and we just did it. Of late, without purposeful intent, I have noticed that we go out 3-5 times per week. We still maintain proper social distancing practices and we always wear masks (gloves have gone by the wayside as experts seem to feel that frequent hand washing is a preferred route.)
The other day (Saturday to be precise) Kim sent me out to obtain some donuts for breakfast. Donuts are hardly an essential food group. It took me some time to find an open donut shop. What I found was what is becoming increasingly common, a shop that separated the workers from the clients with a clear plastic screen that keeps most of the germs contained on one side or the other. Two months ago we would have found that as odd as seeing everyone in every establishment with a facemask of one type or another. I bought a few buttermilk cake donuts for Kim and a dozen donut holes for myself. All of these were put into separate paper bags with rubber gloves and handed to me through a small window in the plastic screen. I gave the woman on the other side of the barrier a $20 bill and she looked tentatively at me. I realized that she wished I had used a credit or debit card to pay so that I could transact directly with a machine that she didn’t have to touch. She took the bill and returned the change to me. I took the bills, reminded myself not to touch any of my mucosal membranes and wash my hands when I got home, and told the woman to put the change in the tip bucket. It was her turn to sheepishly throw the change into the bucket. I’m not sure why change seemed dirtier to me than the bills, but it did.
When I got the donuts and donut holes home, I set the paper bags on the counter and went right away to wash my hands. We are all getting used to these new routines I imagine. Then and only then did I take a few donut holes on a plate to enjoy my breakfast. Donuts have never been a particularly healthy breakfast. I remember as a child in Wisconsin when my mother was off trying to get her Ph.D. while raising three young kids by herself. In those times the milkman was still delivering to the door. He had donuts on the truck along with other staples. I discovered that by ticking off “Donuts” on the order form, I would have donuts for myself the very next day. I had no cost concerns because it cost me nothing to tick a box with a pencil. One day after too many days of donuts in a row, the milkman stopped me (being the slightly rotund youth that I was, I clearly looked guilty as hell to him). He asked if my mother knew about the donuts. I took no pleasure in lying to him, and my mother did eliminate donuts from the roster when she got the next monthly bill.
Ever since those days almost sixty years ago, I have loved donuts. I don’t get them very often anymore, but if ever I felt “what the hell” it is now in the days of Coronavirus. Besides, as I remind Kim, donut holes are not donuts and there are no calories in the holes. Maybe I’ll buy donut holes and hand them out to essential workers or at least lonely WFH workers. We can all use them these days.