How the Pandemic has Changed My life

Yesterday, as we were sitting at the dinner table, my wife Linda looked up from her plate of pasta and said to me, “You know we haven’t taken a vacation in more than a year.”

I nodded. I know how much she loves vacations and planning vacations. She loves the work of finding great prices on cruises and resorts and wonderful weekends in places I never thought I’d visit. Since she retired from being a university administrator 15 years ago, vacations and planning them has been her greatest passion, outside of loving me, of course.

Her statement about vacations got me thinking. I started wondering about the other changes in my life since the pandemic started. Of course, there are the big changes, the obvious ones. I don’t go to all the places I loved going to before. I don’t go to libraries or movie theaters or museums or coffee shops anymore. In fact, I don’t go much anywhere, except to buy gasoline at the station down the street. I don’t see my friends either. I haven’t sat across a table from Doug Thom or Mike Friedman or Bob Milewski in over a year and talked about whatever it was we used to talk about. .

But there have also been little changes that I hadn’t thought about until my wife said what she said about vacations.

For instance, you may not believe this, but I’ve stopped using deodorant. I wasn’t even aware that I had stopped using it until one day my wife told me she was going shopping and asked me if I needed some deodorant. I walked into the bathroom and picked up my Old Spice and realized then that I probably hadn’t put on deodorant in maybe a couple of months. I stood there with the Old Spice in my hand, wondering why I had stopped using it. Has the pandemic caused me to stop sweating? I can’t imagine it has.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve stopped wearing shoes. When I get up in the morning, I put on my slippers, and they pretty much stay on my feet all day. Even when I have to go outside to take out the garbage or check the mail or take a walk around the neighborhood or drive to the gas station to buy some gas, I do it in my slippers. The last time I put on my favorite pair of shoes in fact was about a week ago. I saw them in the closet, and I thought I would put them on for a slight change of pace. As soon as I did, I realized it was a mistake. My favorite shoes, ones I had worn for years, suddenly felt awkward, tight, like they didn’t belong to me at all.

But the biggest weirdest, most unexplainable change is the one that I hate the most. I’ve lost my taste for snacking. Don’t ask me why, but suddenly I’ve stopped snacking. Before the pandemic, I would snack on cranberries or almonds or wasabi peas all day long. I’d take a handful in the middle of the morning and the afternoon and the evening.

Now I see one of my old favorites, I just keep walking.

John Guzlowski