Paths No Longer Crossing

18 April 2020

“They say in the end it is a wink of the eye…”, Jackson Browne The Pretender.

Approaching my sixty-fourth birthday I am locked away in my home. I am locked away as I have never been locked away before.  In younger years I spent a couple of weeks at a time locked up in my room because I had a contagious childhood disease (measles, mumps, chicken pox). As an adult I have been locked away to recover from surgery (appendix, gall bladder or cancer). But now I am locked away like people haven’t been locked away in a century, i.e., to save me from a pandemic.

Understand I am not “totally” locked away.  At least once, and usually three or four times, a day I go out for a twenty-minute plus walk.  According to my Apple fitness apps I have gotten all my circles, calories, exercise and standing in for 49 days in a row.  I have only failed to get all of the rings on my Apple watch once in three months.  The incomplete day was rainy and miserable. While I am out on these walks, I yell hello to people on the other side of the street.  I never get closer than 25-30 feet from any non-family members. Yelling hello is not enough for me. Hate to say it but I am beginning to feel like the meme showing the blurry picture of Bigfoot captioned, “World Champion Social Distancer”.

You know, given my age and my health history, I plan to keep working on that world champion status.  Trust me, I am not going to strap on my AR and go marching around claiming my rights have been infringed.  I am okay with the restrictions of the Governor’s order. But I will tell you this, social distancing is driving me bat shit crazy. Nutso.  Yes, I know it is not a drive, but rather a putt in my case.

Why am I going nuts?  Well, I am by nature a very social person.  First and foremost, I like talking to people. I like buying coffee in coffee shops and then shooting the breeze with the baristas.  I enjoy talking to other customers at the tables. In the past after I conducted a hearing, I really had fun talking with the attorneys afterwards.  Be it a break room, or a post church coffee klatch, I enjoy interacting with one on one with other human beings. Social distancing has reduced my direct face interactions to three people, my wife, my first son and my second son. I talk to the cat but she is not a very good conversationalist. This lack of conversational variety is driving me out of my mind.

Over the past month and a half, I have had some long phone calls with friends. I have had some extended conversations over messaging.  Note well, I hate Facebook, it is unequivocally evil.  However, the bane of social networking has offered one thing that is invaluable, contact with people from various time periods in my life.  Once upon a time there came a point where we all said to someone we liked, someone we considered a friend as we moved or they moved, “We will keep in touch.”  Still, we knew that this was a socially comforting lie.  We were going to lose track of them. Back before Facebook there was no way in hell we were going to keep in touch with these people.  Now those lost people from grade school, high school, university, law school, etc., have come back into our lives only if it is through sharing pictures of their cat.   Facebook did that, and it has done it well.  All it takes is a click in Messenger and there is one on one contact. Still phone calls and messaging are not the same as face to face interaction.

On Facebook I posted a note asking if people remembered where they met me.  The vast majority of people met me in school or in a hearing room.  There are some outliers, a former roommate, some friends from church or the old home town. But I know for certain these people came into my life from in person conversation.  

What kind of conversations? Either before or after class when we would bitch about the workload or the teacher.  Or back at the dorm where we would talk about the state of the world over dinner (or music), over coffee and cigarettes. Between hearings in the hallways or the breakrooms of my office we would talk and talk about anything and everything.  Why did this work? It worked because you got some much information from the nonverbal cues, how did people sit, did their face twitch, or did the tone of their voice change. I totally miss this.  Sending DMs and making phone calls does not have the same quality as face to face conversation.  Argh.  

My guess is that most people are feeling the same way I do.  Maybe it is to a greater or lesser extent. But if you are really practicing social distancing there is a loss of connection that is inherent. Certainly, it will not last forever.  But most likely it will last for a goodly long time. Given my age I could be inside and isolated for many months. I sure hope they develop a vaccine soon.  I want to have a few more long conversations over coffee before my time on the mortal coil expires.