It Me

I choose my friends with very specific intent. They are either my mentors, or they are people who chose me as their mentor. I'm a horrible mentor, so most of those folks find someone else to mentor them, leaving me with the people who mentor me.

I went to lunch with one of my mentor friends this week. Instead of staying in our building, which would have been a safe choice, he wanted to walk all over hell and eat in a food court with a million people from a million walks of life as well as some state tournament fans (they were still allowed at the time). I grabbed a pre-packaged bowl of fruit and breathed everyone else's air while we talked for 45 minutes. I should have been an adultier adult in that situation.

To make matters worse, I met with two of my other mentors the following day to discuss postponing upcoming meetings due to COVID19. My friends, we met in person in a goddamn coffee shop when it would have been perfectly acceptable to meet via messenger. The only one of us with any sense of self-preservation was working from home that day and called in to the meeting. I was there, but sitting at a separate table to get some distance. When one of my mentors had trouble hearing the call, she said, "We could probably all sit at one table."

This is where I finally lost my goddamn patience and said, "Really? We're supposed to be social distancing right now."

For those of you not paying attention to what's happening in the world:

1.DON'T BE RACIST (stealing from John Oliver, but yes, this should be first). Chinese Americans didn't bring this disease to this country and Chinese food isn't going to hurt you. Italian food might give you heart disease, but that's your fault, not its fault.

2. WASH YOUR HANDS.

3. SOCIAL DISTANCING:

a. Phone or video conference instead of meeting in person.

b. Work from home if you can.

c. If you're sick, stay home.

4. Don't buy it unless you need it. Masks don't help, so stop buying them and stealing them from our medical professionals who need them. There are much worse bugs out there and you're endangering our first line of defense.

5. Learn what you can about COVID19. Knowledge is power.

We decided we won't meet until next month. I'm going to need that time to learn how to use my adulty-adult powers for good. Right now, it's far too tempting to use them to wreak havoc on their ignorance.