Pandemic Safety

Katiedid Langrock
Fri, 05 Mar 2021 21:00:00 -0800
Lifestyle

"You got any dogs?" the woman running the alligator ranch and swamp tour asked. She was giving me the rules for setting up our motorhome to spend the night in her parking lot.

"No," I said.
Updated: Sat Mar 06, 2021

"You got any dogs?" the woman running the alligator ranch and swamp tour asked. She was giving me the rules for setting up our motorhome to spend the night in her parking lot.

"No," I said.

"If you got dogs, you gotta tell me."

"We don't have any dogs," I reassured her.

"Little dogs? Quiet dogs?"

"No dogs."

"'Cause you can't have dogs goin' out to go potty in the middle of the night."

Goodness gracious, what is this lady's problem?

"Our 14-foot alligator, Bubs," she continued, "likes to take walks around the parking lot at night."

Oh, that's her problem.

"He's a roamer, and he's an eater. He'll eat your little dog if you let it out to go potty in the middle of the night."

"We don't have a dog," I said. "Only kids. And I promise I will not let my 5-year-old out to go potty in the middle of the night."

She didn't laugh. I wiped the smile off my face.

"Don't do that, either."

"Yes, ma'am."

When you become a parent, you become open to constant suspicion and judgment. When you become a parent parenting during a pandemic, it's as if you're wearing a sign on your back that says, "Kick me (emotionally)."

I've been judged for having my kids wear masks during hikes. "Trying to give them an asthma attack?" I've been judged for pulling them out of school and taking them on this adventure. "Are you trying to spread the virus across the country?"

Not that I am without my own judgment. The alligator woman asking me whether I had a dog had multiple signs outside her building saying, "No entry unless wearing a mask." She, however, wasn't wearing one — which said to me, "I want you to protect my health, but I'll do nothing to protect yours." Or, perhaps more accurately for this specific lady, "I care more about your dog's life than yours."

Man, I'm ready for this virus to be over, for the exhaustive fog of judgment to lift.

"It's just so individualized," my cousin said as we met in a park. My children had barely been near another child in a year, let alone played. "Everyone is trying to do what's right, but what's seen as right is so unique to the individual."

This is true. I hear the risks my friends are taking with their kids, and I think they are being completely reckless. My friends, however, think I'm the reckless one. Maybe we're both right. Or both wrong.

"I had to send my kids back to school. The kids were getting weird," my cousin said. "And weird runs in our family, so if I'm noticing the weirdness, you know they were getting super weird."

Yesterday I signed my kids back up for school next year. I'm hoping we will have herd immunity by then. I'm hoping we will be back to normal. But not old normal, a new normal. A better normal. My kids want a dog when the virus is over. They're looking for a new, better normal, too.

"What are you gonna tell kids at school about our trip?" I asked my son.

"I'm gonna tell them how I was attacked in the middle of the night by a giant alligator while I was trying to go to the bathroom!"

"But that didn't happen," I said.

"But it could've" he said.

"But it didn't," I said.

At the anniversary of schools closing because of a pandemic, there are a lot of things that could've happened that didn't. There are a lot of things that could've happened that did. Somewhere between the did and the didn't, we have to find what to focus on. I'm trying to teach my kids to focus on the good things that did and the bad things that didn't. I'm trying to teach myself, too.

"I guess I can tell them about the time I was holding a baby alligator and it slapped me across the face with its tail. And when I got bit by two wild prairie dogs. And pinched by a crab at the beach."

"Perfect!" I said.

"You know, everyone is gonna think you're a really reckless mom for letting these things happen to me," my son said.

I can live with that.