Back in the spring of 2020, a lot of so-called experts had doom-and-gloom takes about the long-term changes that COVID-19 would bring to society. Boy, were they wrong. We answered each challenge by innovating—and, two years later, we’re thriving more than ever.
Naysayers warned that we’d have trouble adjusting to doing everything online—shopping, working, going to school, socializing via Zoom “happy hours”—but that’s not a concern anymore, ever since the Internet went out for good. It’s amazing the deep meaning we can find in “Can’t Hardly Wait” after a few hundred viewings of that old, reliable VHS tape (the only physical media we had in our homes when we lost the streaming services).
When the murder hornets showed up, as we were settling into our long quarantine, some pessimists thought that we had to get rid of them. But, if we didn’t have the murder hornets, who would fight the super-aggressive rats that are always trying to steal our canned food? The murder hornets slow them down a bit, and that’s a win in my book.
It wasn’t easy when a typo in the fourteenth federal coronavirus-relief bill mandated that every American pay the treasury two thousand dollars per month, but nothing could take away our can-do attitude until the fifteenth coronavirus-relief bill said we had to send that over, too.
Was it disturbing when sharks learned how to fly? Perhaps. But what a joy it was to ride them for that one day before they then also learned to get angry. And now, even though they’re furious (and very hungry)—look, that’s their business.
When a series of mysterious electromagnetic pulses from outer space started killing everyone who heard any musical chord except D minor, did we grouse? No—our artists adapted. It’s a perfectly fine chord, and the Billboard 200 is filled with fun hits such as “I Miss B Minor,” “Is It Also Permissible to Play the Individual Notes Within D Minor?,” and the song of summer, “This Is Awful—At Least Also Let Me Play a Plain Old D.”
The pundits said that we’d never be able to go back to work under these conditions—but we get there every day in our individual motorcoffins, which protect us from light, air, and other humans, all of which have proved quite deadly. Plus, look at the gigantic spike in motorcoffin sales. It’s a pleasure to take a relaxing motorcoffin ride on Saturdays from 10 to 11 P.M., the National Hour of Rest, which I’ve just been told has been shortened to 10 to 10:45.
There were those who acted like the sky was falling when the sky started falling, but the more resourceful among us have used chunks of fallen sky to build sky-chunk-protection helmets and sell them on Etsy. Just make sure to wear one when you’re dropping off your latest shipment at the post office—and remember that, after recent changes to federal law, the post office is a machine that sucks in your package and shoots it back into your face as punishment.
So think about all the new joys we’re experiencing, and just try not to smile. No, really, try not to—if you do, you’ll be risking your life, thanks to the emergence of 2022’s GRIN (Gladness-activated Recombinant Incineration Norovirus), which makes smiling people explode.
