Covid has made our family a talking point – and cured me of Twitter | Parents and parenting

THere are a few consolations for Covid, but at least it is interesting to have a famous disease. We became objects of admiration for our friends and family who began to question us about our symptoms as if we were small-town villains who didn’t have it yet and heard we were at Disneyland.

A little mercy of Covid’s sluggishness is that it has reduced my use of Twitter as it is so hard to focus on backlit screens – it’s untouched and it’s surprising how much my brain enjoyed the apocalyptic scrolling. Fortunately, others are on hand to inform us about every new stat, graphic, and terrible news.

Strangely enough, I didn’t realize that every single person I know had spent the past year doing a correspondence course on epidemiology, and now each knows more about our symptoms – our symptoms – than we do. We’ve been reliably informed at every stage and with something not completely disconnected from joy, that the worst is probably not yet to come. On Day 4 I was seriously informed, ‘5. Day is where everything is messy ‘and a few days later:’ 8. beware of the day. ‘ Now, after getting a little wake up around day 14, I was reminded today of the ‘two week point to watch out for’.

“There are now gorillas at the San Diego zoo,” was told by several people on the day the news was made public, hoping to either abandon long-standing plans to visit poor primates or challenge me to offer an excuse. for the transmission in question. Most just want to know how we’re going and scan us for symptoms. Many of them not only seemed intrigued, but also seemed positively satisfied with the idea that we could lose our sense of taste and smell, and were greatly disappointed each time we reported that both remained intact. In such cases, there is usually a pause in the phone line, as if £ 19.99 Basic Coronavirus Package – fatigue, pain, complaint – instead of the £ 49.99 Covid + Deluxe deal – no odor, random bones coughing, all Sky Sports and Movie channels.

Mostly, it was nice to hear from people as we hadn’t left home in any way for two weeks. This has been pretty easy for us because we’ve already lost interest in the world outside these walls. This depletion of life may be the longest tail of the virus; A pessimistic drowsiness that persists long after the aches and pains begin to subside.

I feel sorry for the boy who suffered from the disease for a few days and then was stuck indoors with two worn-out adults, who was left idle like a rocket detained for 10 days. It goes without saying that our middle-class hatreds are falling apart for her watching CBeebies all day. We forgive ourselves for this. Either that or we start it on Twitter.

Follow Séamas on Twitter @Christmas