As I sit here during this worldwide health crisis trying to enjoy the fact that it’s relatively easy for me to just fall off the face of the earth, it makes me wonder what it would be like for people who are sheltering in place with their families. I have a pretty good idea what it’s like for my parents since I check in with them every few days. When I think about my sister and brother-in-law’s house though, it’s a little different.
First of all, my sister works in a hospital which makes her one of the front-line workers constantly referred to in the media, so anyone on Facebook reading this should probably leave a comment thanking her for enduring the added stress and responsibility that she and her co-workers are managing during these times.
Anyway. I used to be much more involved with my sister’s family when my nephews were younger. These days, not quite as much. I text with my sister all the time. I get along with my brother-in-law very well, and I always enjoy when I get to spend time with him. But my nephews aren’t little boys anymore, and all have lives of their own. For perspective, the youngest one has spent this spring finishing his freshman year at the University of Minnesota — remotely, or course.
I don’t know how often my nephews are able to all get together. Normally when we have family birthdays or similar events, we try to schedule the celebrations for days when everyone will be available. I get to see them together on these days, and it always makes me feel good to see how easily, as a group, they slip back into a very solid friendship.
Even though I’m not there, and I know the three of them are not all sheltering in place together, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what it would be like to eavesdrop on their conversations / arguments / joking around if they were. With that in mind, I have put together fifteen very brief dramatic scenes I believe would capture this hypothetical. For the record, I’ve exaggerated much of what they say here, as well as their responses, for comedic effect. Having said that, I think anyone who has had the chance to see the three of them in action, and how much fun they have bantering back and forth, could back me up with how close to the mark many of these scenes are.
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Nephew #3: The Twins aren’t playing baseball this year. It’s your fault because you were so bad at baseball that they all gave up.
Nephew #2: (Deadpan stare) There’s a pandemic going on, idiot. They can't let people into a stadium to watch any games.
Nephew #3: You’re just using that as an excuse. It’s still your fault.
Nephew #2: You’re the worst.
Nephew #3: Not at baseball. That'd be you.
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#2: Do you know why Mom still goes to work?
#3: Because it’s her job.
#2: No. It’s not for money. It’s because she hates you and wants to get out of the house.
#3: Wrong. I am the reason she comes back home.
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#1: Remember that time when we were kids, and you guys put on all of your clothes for padding, and then me and one of my friends shot at you with air rifles from the patio?
#2: (rolls eyes) Yes.
#3: We were stupid.
#1: We should do something like that again today, but with you running from cars.
#2: Cars? What the hell! Why cars?!
#1: Social distancing.
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#2: My eyes are blurring over from all the Netflix. Mom, we need a big TV for my room.
MOM: You believed Tom when he told you TV paint was a real thing. Maybe you should get a can of that and paint up a TV the size of your wall.
#2: TV paint isn’t real. But it should be. It would've been so cool.
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#3: You know I’m a writer for a comedy magazine.
#2: Oh, they had an issue written by people they felt sorry for because they suck?
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#3: I have homework to do.
#2: Watching Game of Thrones again doesn’t count.
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#2: You should go see a movie tonight.
#3: The theater is closed.
#1: It’s not that late. You could probably still get in.
#3: There’s a virus out there. It’s closed, like, closed so they aren’t showing movies. Idiot.
#2: You could still probably get in and then just sit in a dark room by yourself.
#3: Even if I could, why would I ever want to do that?
#1: Who cares? At least you wouldn’t be here anymore.
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#3: Where are my Starbursts?
#2: (thoughtful pause) Maybe I ate them. I can’t say for sure. Or, I could say, but I won’t.
#3: Fine. Remember that answer when you ask me why we’re out of chicken.
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#3: (quietly): Why is Dave just staring at the TV when it’s not even on?
#2: I have no idea, but it’s weird.
(They both walk to the kitchen.)
#2 Mom, why is Dave starting at the blank TV?
MOM: He’s pretending sports still exist.
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(#3 tries to sit down in the living room to watch TV)
#2: You can’t sit there.
#3: Why not? The couch holds three people. You’re only a person.
#2: Social distancing. I don’t make the rules.
#3: (leans over and fake-coughs several times on #2)
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#1: I read that some dogs have been infected with the coronavirus.
#3: Yeah, I read that too.
#1: I think you should probably have Willow and Toby and Riley sleep in your room tonight.
#3: Really. Why?
#1: I think they miss you.
#3: They don’t miss me. I never go anywhere.
#1: I think they would appreciate having some quality time with you.
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(MOM stamps hard on the kitchen floor several times. The basement door creaks open.)
#2: What?
MOM: Tell your brother it’s time for dinner.
#2: He’s been quiet in his room for hours. I think he has coronavirus.
MOM: No he doesn’t. He isn't showing any symptoms.
#2: But he’s the worst.
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#1: Let the dogs out.
#2: I’m not going outside. There’s coronavirus everywhere.
#1: Current findings say that virus particles aren’t freely floating through the air.
#2: You don’t know that, Dr. Science!
#3: Take the dogs out before the poop on the floor!
#2: (Stares) You know they’re going to do that anyway.
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#1: I saw online there’s a new update for Pokémon Go. You should download it.
#3: Why?
#2: There’s a whole bunch of really rare Pokémon all in the same place.
#3: Where?
#1: Some place where there’s a lot of coronavirus. You should go check it out.
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#3: Where’s your mask? You should go put your mask on.
#2: Why? I’m not going anywhere.
#3: But Mom is coming home soon.
#2: What does that have to do with my mask?
#3: She’s probably had a hard day and doesn’t want to be reminded you live here.
Not long ago, I saw a question posed somewhere online that asked people to name five albums that were popular back when they were in high school, or something like that. It got me thinking, and I followed that rabbit hole even further: What would be the five albums that were probably responsible for my becoming the music fanatic I am today? I looked through my music library, assuming that albums so fundamental to my history would still be there somewhere. I think I found them. I started with a list of about twenty, then narrowed it down to these five. Here they are, and the reasons they made the list. As always, in no particular order:
“The Grand Illusion” by Styx
It would almost be fair to put Styx’s album “Paradise Theater” here instead, since the argument could be made that it was my true introduction to rock music. My mother actually bought the album when it came out, because it had that pretty “The Best of Times” song on it. "Paradise Theater" isn't a bad album by any measure, but it’s pretty representative of the poppier direction the band was taking in the early 80s. I liked it, but I was never rabid for it. That didn’t happen until I went back into the band’s discography and found “The Grand Illusion.”
The title song was one of those gems you always felt lucky to hear if you were listening to KQRS at the right time. I’d call it the band’s best album. There isn’t really any filler there, and even though Styx was already being knocked around as a corporate rock band when it came out, a lot of the songs here are constructed with such an eye to detail they approach a progressive feel. Back in junior high, having an older album by a band with a hit song made you look like more of a fan, so I was never shy of telling people who liked “Too Much Time on My Hands” how much better of an album “The Grand Illusion” was. Plus it has “Come Sail Away.” I mean, come on. To this day, that still makes any list of favorite songs I have.
“Escape” by Journey
This was another album my mother bought for a pretty song, or I guess in this case two of them: “Who’s Cryin’ Now” (which I’ve never really liked all that much) and “Open Arms.” “Open Arms" was the kind of song guys at my school would play for their parents if they wanted to see Journey in concert, because it was the safe example that didn't really convey what a blistering rock show Journey was putting on in the early 1980s.
“Escape” is full of deep cuts. It opens with “Don’t Stop Believin’,” which I loved before anyone had ever heard it played on the radio. “Stone in Love,” Still They Ride,” and even the title song were all great. It also had the distinction of having an album cover that was really fun to try and draw on the inside cover of my 7th grade math class notebook.
“Hi Infidelity” by REO Speedwagon
I was listening to Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” radio show back then. “Hi Infidelity” not only had the distinction of an almost unheard of FOUR singles that made the Top 40, but the album itself also sat at the Number 1 position on the album chart for a then record-setting seventeen weeks. It was huge. "Keep on Lovin' You?" "Take it on the Run?" "Don't Let Him Go?" You still here these in rotation on classic rock radio now. The whole album is filled with criminally underrated musicianship.
There’s a scene in the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” when Queen’s manager is telling them all the acts that were going to play at Live Aid. While he lists off legendary act after legendary act, he includes REO Speedwagon in there with the same gravitas as everyone else. I’m sure lots of people saw that movie and wondered why REO was even mentioned — after all, they’re just a casino-touring oldies band now. But if you were around back then and owned a radio, they were inescapable.
“Back in Black” by AC/DC
Besides being an undeniable classic, one of the best selling albums of all time, and one of the cornerstones of hard rock and heavy metal music, it also has the distinction of being the first album I owned that my parents actively disapproved of. Yes, every song on the album basically sounds the same. And the whole album probably only uses seven or eight chords in its entirety. And Brian Johnson’s singing sounds like vocal sandpaper. But for months on end, I could not shake the sound of that guitar buzz. In one way or another, almost every other hard rock album I’ve bought in my life could probably be traced back to this.
To this day, it escapes me why there’s never been a hip hop/rap artist (to my knowledge) to sample or all-out cover the song “Back in Black” and get a gigantic hit. It seems like such a no-brainer.
“Moving Pictures” by Rush
First off, I think it’s worth pointing out that the whole world didn’t really start going to hell this year until Neil Peart died. I’m not saying there’s a correlation there, but I’m not saying there isn’t.
At the time, at least in my corner of the almost-suburbs of Minneapolis, Rush was about as close to an alternative band as my peer group had encountered. They were truly progressive, as proved here with the inclusion of the instrumental track “YYZ” and the more than 10-minute long epic “The Camera Eye.” Everyone who grew up with “Moving Pictures” even peripherally in their cultural awareness knew it was appropriate, if not expected, to stop what you were doing and air-drum along with the solo if you were listening to “Tom Sawyer.”
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And that perhaps serves as my musical origin story. There would still be several key artists for me to discover in later years, as well as a broader variety of genres, but that’s where I was. If it’s true that the music you listened to during your formative years turns out to be the music you end up loving for your entire life, I think I could have done much worse than this.
Another May. My birthday month. Even though my birthday means much less to me now than it did years ago — I think there’s some inversely proportionate relationship between the number of birthdays a person has had and how much they continue to care about them — I still feel a little more affinity for May as a month. It’s when we can say spring has definitely arrived. Usually it even throws a few preview days of summer into the mix. In normal times it signals the winding down of the school year, but unfortunately we aren’t living through normal times. This year, well…I’m still not unhappy about it. There’s an opening feel as the temperatures rise and the grass turns green. However, since March and April have been uncertain times, and those are likely to continue into this month if not get even worse, it’s difficult to know right now if there’s going to be much about this month, if anything, to look forward to.
I’ve been hanging in there pretty well during the pandemic, but I’ll admit to some moments of slipping off the rails. Stir crazy, cabin fever, loneliness, whatever you choose to call it — I’ve likely felt every named version of it at some point. I don’t want to surrender the things I like about May if I don’t have to, though. Even if it’s just a mindset, I want to preserve that. I’ve learned enough about myself to understand that my best way of combatting any feelings of hopelessness or depression is to take as much control over my situation as I can. Because of that, and since there are so many things going on where control has been taken away from us, I’m going to spend this month working to intentionally control as many things as I can think of, to help me stay positive.
A few years back here on Summer Vacation, I did something I’d called the Momentum Project. The idea had been that people give up on New Year’s Resolutions so often because they set themselves up with a goal that will be too difficult to maintain for an entire year, so instead of that I had set myself a new goal to work on each month. They weren’t all successful, and some weren’t that useful to begin with, if I’m being honest. However, I did learn that I can stick to a goal, just about any goal, for at least a month.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to reinvent my daily routine throughout May this year, making it into something more proactive and productive. We all have things about our lives we’d like to improve, or tasks that we allow ourselves to ignore instead of complete. My goal this month will be about the effort. I’ll be scheduling my day to keep my head busy, and maybe along the way I’ll make some of these improvements, or complete some of these jobs I keep putting off. I don’t expect it to go perfectly, but I figure if I start this month of posts by announcing that I’m doing this, I’ll apply a little more pressure on myself to stay true to the goal.
It’s surprising how much can be accomplished in a month when you set your mind to it. I know I’ll have days when I won’t approach this plan with the same enthusiasm I have for it now, but the important thing will be to keep it going. Today is May first, so I’ve got about thirty days to see what happens. Fingers are optimistically crossed.
