Quick note to say: Your Humble Blogger has been jabbed—I am being Pfizered out of submission as we speak. A sore arm is the only side effect at present, but then, at fifty-glob years of age, I’m bound to be sore somewhere, so why not my arm?
I got my dose at an event in the lobby of a big music hall; there were a zillion of us going through at incredible efficiency and smoothness, and I can’t remember ever being in a more cheerful and pleasant group of strangers. In fact, I can barely remember being in a group of strangers at all, after a year of pandemic. Still, it was remarkable how little griping or impatience or mannerlessness there was.
When the great sportswriter Joe Posnanski wrote about seeing Hamilton he mentioned that there’s something remarkable about a room full of people who all want to be exactly where they are right at that moment—who are, in fact, thrilled by the opportunity to be where they are right at that moment. It doesn’t happen very often. Even at a ballgame—even at the Super Bowl, there are plenty of people who were dragged there by someone, or who are entertaining a client, or looking after a kid, or have a headache but don’t want to waste their ticket. He said there were times at the Olympics, though, that you could tell that everyone in a massive stadium couldn’t believe their luck that they got in. He felt something like that in the Broadway house for Hamilton.
I felt something like that in the waiting line for my needle.
I know, it doesn’t change anything immediately. It will be a month and another inoculation before I am ‘fully vaccinated’, and even then I will still be wearing a mask and maintaining physical distance in my workplace and other indoor locations. It’s not a magic proverbial… except that it kinda is, innit?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.