After four months with no access to a hair salon, but plenty of access to peanut M&Ms, there is no part of me that is ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. Yet, despite not being camera-ready, I recently had the starring role in a COVID comedy of errors.
Like many other people, I’ve been in a mental fog since the pandemic lockdown first began—although to be perfectly honest, my brain likely went into lockdown long before that. With nothing more urgent on my daily agenda than aimlessly wandering from room to room, time has become meaningless as days, then weeks, and finally entire months have blended together. Thus, I was easily convinced that I had miscalculated the date of Father’s Day by a week when I misread a post on Facebook. Thinking I had less than twenty-four hours to throw together some semblance of a celebration—party of two, in our kitchen—I panicked. Obviously, I had no time to order anything online, but after months of safe isolation the thought of exposing myself to the public germ arena, particularly on the Saturday that I mistakenly thought was the day before Father’s Day, kind of terrified me.
I dismissed all the larger retail Petri dishes out of hand, no high-risk malls/shopping complexes for me, and finally settled on Target as the best one-stop shopping spot I could easily and quickly navigate. I masked up, grabbed the Purell, and headed out with mild trepidation. Upon arrival, I was happy to see that despite the sunny weather, the parking lot was not crowded with other last minute Father’s Day shoppers. Everyone plans better than I do, I thought to myself, but at least I’d remembered to keep viral-prone surfaces to a minimum by leaving my purse at home. I’d only brought along my debit card and keys, which I zipped into the inside waist pocket of my leggings after locking the car.
Entering the store, I instinctively started to remove my prescription sunglasses to exchange for my regular glasses, but quickly realized my regular glasses were safely self-isolating at home in my purse. I had two options for visual navigation—to remove my sunglasses and see bright but blurry-edged images or leave them on and see clearly outlined but dark ones. I opted for number one and tucked the temple of my sunglasses into the neck of my t-shirt.
I headed straight to the card department, and through squinted eyes, picked one out. I was almost positive it was a Father’s Day card, and, one, I hoped, that didn’t include the words “to be” anywhere in the fine print. I wasn’t looking to give my 66-year-old husband a heart attack for Father’s Day. Next, I hit up the candy aisle and grabbed the fanciest chocolate available at a big-box discount store. Finally, I zoomed to the men’s department and snapped up two brightly colored polo shirts. (It never hurts to remind my husband that fashion choices beyond navy blue and black do exist, even in a pandemic.)
Whew, success! A mere twenty-four, socially-distanced minutes after entering the store, I was headed to an open check-out lane. The cashier was so fast she had my few items scanned and bagged before I even had a chance to retrieve my debit card from my inside pocket. That’s when things started to go terribly awry. Suddenly, there were three people in line behind me, and I couldn’t get the stupid card out of my pocket. The more I tried to hurry, the more twisted the flimsy mesh pocket became. I was so flustered I yanked on it hard enough for the whole pocket to rip free of my leggings, and I ended up punching myself in the nose and dropping the pocket on the floor in the bargain. When I bent over to pick up the pocket, my face mask rode up and poked me in both myopic eyes. Eyes tearing and cheeks flushing, I paid, collected my bags, and hurried out.
When I stepped outside, the formerly sunny skies were filled with tremendous black storm clouds. In typical Atlanta fashion, they let loose with torrential rains in the two minutes it took me to wrangle the keys from my disembodied pocket. Since my umbrella was in my car—of course—I stood under the awning for a few minutes, trying to gauge how long the downpour would last. It wasn’t until I overheard two shoppers several feet away commenting about their foggy glasses that I realized I no longer had my sunglasses hooked onto my t-shirt. They were gone. I realized they must have fallen off when I bent over at the check-out counter to pick up my pocket.
I ran back inside and made a beeline for the check-out lane I’d used. There on the floor under a woman’s cart were my glasses, which I snatched up mere seconds before she rolled over them. Shaking with relief, I once again exited the store, and finding the downpour had lessened to a drizzle, headed for my car. Halfway there, the heavens opened again, and by the time I got the door unlocked and hurled myself inside, my bags and I were soaked through. I dried myself off with my stash of drive-thru napkins and then grabbed the Purell. Just as I was pumping out a palmful, an unexpected, but quite sonorous crack of thunder shook the car, causing me to jerk and sanitizer to fly everywhere. Out of napkins, I had to wipe up the wayward drips with the hem of my t-shirt. When I finished mopping up, I got out my phone, Googled Father’s Day, and learned it was begun by a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd in 1910. I then Googled “hexes,” and put the most powerful one I could find on her descendants. Finally, I drove home.
The next morning, I presented my husband with his gifts and chirped, “Surprise! Happy Father’s Day!”
I figured his confused expression was because he was not fully awake or because of his disappointment over the Target tags. It turned out, of course, the surprise was on me. Father’s Day was a full week away and the calamities of the previous day could have been avoided if I only had a brain.
So, he ate his chocolate, I returned the shirts (he gave in on the colors, but the sleeves were strangely tight), and then I spent the afternoon trolling the internet for a suitable Father’s Day gift. I settled on a nice, neutral colored, relaxed fit gift card.
Let’s hope 2021 is kinder to all of us. Even the descendants of Sonora Smart Dodd.