Damien Galeone

Last week, I was bemoaning the changes that COVID has wrought upon our daily lives. No bars, no friends, becoming aware of yet two other varieties of Global Asshole (anti-maskers, the new anti-vaxxer, and anti-vaxxers: COVID style).   

Then there’s my blog. I know all three of you wait with bated breath for my Monday installment and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your continued readership. Especially these days when nothing is happening to me. I used to write about the humor in my daily interactions, but I don’t have those anymore. Oh, I try to banter with Burke, but she knows all of my jokes. All. Every single one. The cat, well, she just bites me if I pester her and I’m trying to avoid emergency rooms. Also, it’s pretty hard to distract anything that can lick its own butt while it’s engaged in that activity.

I used to have loads of student interactions as fodder to blog about. But now my conversations are had over the Zoomisphere with disembodied voices, and where my comments and charming observations echo painfully among the column of white names against black backgrounds where they die in a techno crackle. Alone.

I have attempted to interact with people on my walks in the park. But people are warned about chatting with strange sweating men in parks. And I tried to chat with people at the supermarket. But it’s hard not to be the lunatic in a conversation when you’re caressing a sweet potato. Alas, all of my hopes for light interaction were stifled by isolation and people having good sense.

Thus, I entered a Blue Period.

These days, there’s really only one way to deal with a blue period. Oh, there used to be other ways, most of which revolved around pubs: Beer. Becherovka. Chewing tobacco. A talk with Lee. Singing along with Aneta Langerová. Kebab on the way home. This had a remarkable effect on my blue periods, often because the lobe-shattering headache I was suffering through the next day left no room for dealing with sadness. But now, I am trapped at home and sad about being trapped at home, so I thought it unwise to get drunk while trapped at home.

No, I dealt with this particular blue period by ordering chicken wings.

There are few problems on this planet that can’t be momentarily eased by chicken wings. (For you, not the chicken.) Fifteen stubs of goodness, drenched in sauce, a side of ranch dressing (or blue cheese when I’m feeling traditionalist), carrots and celery. I go to work on them in the one-handed hold method, up one side, down the other, each side getting a dip into ranch dressing, then I split the wing and clean out the meat from in between.

And I get them delivered because I’m socially responsible.

The delivery man calls and I begin my way down. I am wearing my COVID uniform, which is not intentionally monochrome, but happens to consist of all gray from my slippers to my sweats to my T shirt to my cardigan to my my winter hat. It doesn’t bode well for a projection of my mental state. But I don’t care. Wings.

The delivery man is nice, smiling, good-natured. He loves delivering wings. I wish everyone loved their job this much.

“What are you doing inside?!” he shouts. “It’s so nice outside!”

“I was out all day,” I say.

“Sure,” he says as he hands me a bag with three orders of wings in it.

“Ha, ha,” I laugh and hand him a tip. “This is from all of us.” I am including the cat in “all of us.”  

The man thanks me and gets in his car. I want to chat. I want to plead my case. But now I’m holding a bag with 45 legs in it. I watch after the car as it drives off. My next door neighbors smile at me and we all walk into the building.

“Hi,” I say. I am carrying 45 wings in a bag and I am dressed like a human lamppost.

They smile. I foresee banter on the way up to our flats (they live on my floor), but they both stop to get their mail. After all, we all know that the biggest mail haul of the week comes at 6:45 on Saturday evening.

But it doesn’t matter. Wings.