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The Pandemic Has Made Us Worse Versions of Ourselves
Hopefully it is only temporary.
I continue walking. One hand steadies the leashes of my two dogs. The other fumbles for headphones. Headphones to block out the tirade of obscenities hurled at my back.
Voices of NPR’s hushed broadcast proved ill-equipped to dam the flow of vomited insults and phrases. Shaken, not stirred, I walk on, putting one block, then a second, between myself and the 40-year-old adolescents consumed in their explosive temper tantrums.
Eventually, the yelling stops, but more so from the lack of air huffed and puffed into their struggling lungs, than any distance I made. Their lungs gave way before their anger could.
While my body moved, my mind struggled as it fought to focus. The two adults, sick with anger, had cut my head open and used it as their own trash can to vomit hatred and aggression and insecurities into my open skull. Now my brain sloshed against their words. It numbed me, and yet for some reason, it didn’t completely shock me. I’d seen it time and time again on the news, on social media, on the radio and in newspapers. Modern America.
An America coming out of the pandemic.
