The Incident

I could say I’m being a good citizen

sheltering in place while the Virus

COVID-19 runs wild outside. Truth

is, I’m an apartment-bound, disabled

recluse who would stay inside anyway.

Some pundits and politicians on TV say

they hate the term, sheltering in place,

as it was more commonly used for a

mass shooter firing away at students

and teachers in school. All right then,

quarantined, they say. It’s more civil

even though both mass shooters and

Coronvirus are killers in their own way.

Only issue then is who is quarantined,

the outsiders or me. I suppose it’s all

a semantic technicality. So here I am,

sick and tired of watching TV, even

the free movies seem boring to me. It’s

all the same bang-bang, boom-boom,

CGI, blow ‘em up shit anyway.

I call up Carlos Montya flamenco guitar

on my Amazon Echo—Alexa, volume up!

I don’t know why, but I start thinking

about a time in my life 35-years or so

ago when I was married with two kids

and living in a 3-bedroom ranch in a

middle class suburban neighborhood

outside of Kansas City.

My next door neighbor, Joe, was a gen-

eration older than I. He was a VP at Western

Auto and could have certainly afforded to

live in a more upscale neighborhood. He had

two teenage daughters and a wife with

a mental medical condition. In any case,

Joe appeared to me to be a man of conser-

vative means.

Anyway, one of Joe’s daughters knocked at

my door, and asked me if I could come to

her house and check on her dad. He was ill

in bed with a fever, and her mom didn’t

know what to do. Now, I wasn’t a medical

professional, but I could certainly call 911

if I saw the need.

I went with her. Joe was lying in bed with

the blanket pulled up to his head. He was

awake and lucid, but was running a fever,

sweats alternating with the chills, achy all

over, he told me. Are you taking anything

for the fever, I asked him? No, he replied.

Can you take aspirin, I went on? I guess

so, he answered.

I went back home, got my bottle of aspirin

and returned. I gave him a couple to take

right away, and left the bottle on his night-

stand with instructions to take two more

every four hours until the fever broke.

Must have had the flu was my best guess.

But if things got worse, I told him, call

a doctor or 9ll. He thanked me and I left.

I was a sales order taker for a local firm at

the time; Joe was an executive with a na-

tionwide automotive company. The flu back

then, as with the dreaded and spreading

virus today, doesn’t care who it strikes;

to those everyone is the same.

And today, quarantined and home alone,

I wondered why that simple incident more

than thirty-years ago decided to pop into my

head? Perhaps the current pandemic we’re

experiencing now had something to do with

it. That, I suppose, and the crappy movies

and bad news on TV.

                        -30-

Chris Hanch 3-31-2020