It was not supposed to be like this, walking the aisles of grocery stores wearing a mask, pushing a shopping cart, looking for toilet paper.
Thousands are dying. But this is not the end. I know that.
I’ve seen “Omega Man” with Charlton Heston. There will be virus survivors, but most of them will be ignorant, angry people who burn books and haunt the streets at night looking to murder those who believe in medicine.
I was going to be Heston. I was sure of it while watching that movie. The handsome, really smart guy living in a tower, holding off the deformed nocturnal people who blame technology and science for their condition. They may have been wearing MAGA hats.
That was an apocalyptic vision I could live with.
This is different than that.
Of course, I was never that smart. I couldn’t find the cure to save humanity or come up with mechanical devices to fight off the hordes of evil beings infected by the plague. I couldn’t fix a running toilet.
But I could be Woody Harrelson in “Zombieland.”
That’s the movie where a cow disease mutates into a mad person disease and people become zombies.
Harrelson is one of the survivors but seems to have no special skills except for shooting zombies and smelling out Twinkies wherever he goes.
I love Twinkies. At least I did before I became old and my body couldn’t process the sugar anymore.
Now I search for cans of tuna fish and jars of dietary fiber. See what I mean. It’s wasn’t supposed to be like this when the great pandemic hit.
Instead of roaming the highways in a souped-up car like Mel Gibson in the original “Mad Max,” I sit home, as ordered by my government.
In “Mad Max” the economy collapsed for some unknown reason and there’s an oil crisis. The idea of life without cars drives people insane, so they gather in tribal gangs and start killing each other while riding around in dune buggies.
It turns out I can stay home without going crazy (so far) and that saves on gas, which maybe can save the planet, if we ever have the time to worry about climate change again. Ahh, those were the good old days.
On TV, announcers tell us the rising death toll in cities and states by the hour and the day. That’s the way I remember it from those end of the world movies. The old doctor who appears with the president looks about right.
I’ve always loved TV, but I’m tired of the daily reminders about the virus. And it turns out that even with 1,283 different cable channels, Netflix and Amazon Prime, there is never anything worth watching except detective shows out of Great Britain. I keep turning the volume up but still can’t understand the actors, so I use closed captioning that turns English into American.
This is how it is. Not how it was supposed to be.
Now I am the old man. The best I can hope for in this drama is the role of cynical curmudgeon.
The old fellow ultimately can’t keep up with the rest of the survivors but is willing to sacrifice himself for the young people who still have a chance.
“Here, you take my Clorox wipes and my ventilator,” he says. “You’ll need them, kid.”
The old guy then pulls the pin off the grenade he’s holding and waits for shoppers to come within six feet of his grocery cart.
“Maybe now you will keep your distance, damn it!” Boom!
Well, excuse me while I pee, like every 10 minutes. Didn’t see that coming when I was a young. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I never saw it coming.
Hey, remember to wash those hands while singing Happy Birthday after you kill the zombies.
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