A HORSE CALLED POMMEL

  

“Put a mask on,” I commanded my husband.

“I’m not wearing a mask to go to Home Depot. No one else does.”

“If everyone stripped naked and went jogging, would you do it too?”

He looked confounded. “I used to streak on motorcycles naked.” He had that been-there-done-that-nude look on his face. “But I always wore tennis shoes so that I didn’t hurt my feet when I shifted.”

He always includes this last bit of information about wearing shoes while naked when he reminisces about his wild and wooly teenage years. I don’t know why. But he does.

So the mask debate rages on. But not at our house. Truthfully, we’ve been on lock down for about a decade and so not a lot changed when the world went mad and started setting their hair on fire to kill possible infection.

Sigh. Besides, we’ve already survived the big, bad germ war.

My husband, the former naked motorcycle rider, works for an international computer titan, headquartered in the heart of California’s nerd land. Early this year, he traveled to the edge of our fine nation where herds of nerds like to hang out. There are nerds from every land and clime—gross wet-market countries included. So in January, my husband headed to Santa Clara county in California to hang out in the cafeteria and to touch lots of grubby surfaces, door handles, and computerly stuff.

He came home with one kick-butt cough.

I blamed dirty airplanes.

The cough was so bad he headed to the doctor to be told he had a virus. “Go home,” they said. He did. And promptly gave the unknown, creepy virus to me.

I got the weirdest cold of my life. “This is the weirdest cold of my life,” I said to anyone who would listen. No one did. “This is the weirdest cough of my life,” I said to no one. And no one noticed. After three weeks enduring a cough that left me in danger of passing out, I lived to tell the tale.

How do we keep our spirits up during lock down? We watch gymnastics on YouTube and pretend we understand the scoring system. I like to imagine my nerdly husband trying to hang from the high bar the men use to fling themselves around on. Since Sherwood can’t straighten his legs and point his toes AT THE SAME TIME without inviting muscle contorting foot cramps, the vision leaves me in hysterics.

“I would pay money to see you hang from that bar,” I gasp.

“It would kill me,” he admits.

“Better that, than the ‘Rona.” I pat his hand and reach for a bowl of boiled peanuts.

And so we wait and watch and wonder what happened to all the non-judgmental memes from the pre-pandemic days of live and let live. Now, it’s judgment 24-7 about everything from the number of micro-inches between my nasal passages and yours and whether or not that mask I’m wearing is cute enough to be scientifically effective.

“How’s the pandemic raging?” I ask my husband.

He slides the bowl of boiled peanuts my way. “Hard to know. The headlines are ripped straight from the front page of the National Inquirer. Outer Space Alien Toddler’s Eyeballs Explode From Skull – Covid Suspected,” he reports.

“Sounds like things are slowing down then.”

“Ready to watch the pommel horse competition from Rio?”

“Sure. I would pay money to see you flip over a horse called Pommel.”

“It would kill me,” he confesses.

We eat boiled peanuts and wait for the end of yellow journalism.

Linda (Happy Streaking) Zern