Follow The Light

Virus

Part 1 of 30

Everyone knows nature doesn’t mess around. When particular combinations of things come together, there’s consequences. In many cases, the combinations are great for us or OK or adequate, fair to middlin', and sometimes pisspoor. Beans, sauce, and chili powder make chili, the prime example of a combination that’s great. Put in a little hamburger and it’s to die for. Then there’s a whole range of OK or adequate combinations: Stripes and solids in clothing, air and lungs in breathing, pencils and pens in schools, and steves and dores in loading or unloading ships.

Our lives depend on good combinations of things coming together in a good way. At Grandma’s place we used to go out and manually pump our water and bring it in the house for everyone to drink. Back then we either didn’t have viruses or were just too dumb to realize we did, but everyone drank with a common ladle out of the same bucket. It’s still interesting to me that no one ever got sick or died. But who knows? If the wrong person had come in and taken a drink, then died, they might’ve sued us big-time. (That was the same house I later lived in with Grandma, but since then it’s rotted away and was hauled to the dump and now I live in the Big City. But one day I was back in the old ‘hood and the pump’s still there, now as a decorative item.)

The combination of things we’re interested in these days involve the virus and making sure we don’t come into contact with it. Certainly no one’s drinking from the same ladle. We’re a lot more careful now, and no one more so than me. Now, I'm a huge germaphobe -- virus or no virus -- but I wasn't as a kid. But a guy gets a little bit of knowledge and it makes a huge difference. Anytime I’m with anyone I’m very watchful of them. If they touch something, that registers. Not so much because of the virus, but that’s just how it is. But now with the virus, of course I'm more mindful. I hate going to the grocery store or really anywhere. I don’t mind taking a walk, but if I meet anyone, or see them coming a mile away, I’m busy making preparations for how I’m going to get the hell out of there.

One of these days, though, whether the virus is still around or not, there’s going to be something, hopefully just internal normal stuff and not a combination of good and bad that could’ve been avoided that’s going to take me, your faithful scribe, out of this good old earth. But don’t worry, I’ve got enough life insurance for a fit burial, a small combo, trumpet and kazoo, the best cardboard urn money can buy, and incongruously a few phone numbers for the most economical crematories, with their great mottos: “We Put The Ashes in ‘Ashes to Ashes’” and my favorite, “This Ain't Hell, Just A Cremation.”

Later, the soul is busy flitting its way to its reward, upward and onward! Ride like the wind! All a guy has do is “Follow the Light, They'll Get Me There.”