I went to Lowe’s today. In case you don’t live in my state or country, it’s a huge store that specializes in construction, yard, and gardening stuff. It is divided into two enormous sections - the regular indoors one, and the other one that has a glass roof and has all the plants, trees, veggies and soil for sale.
No, it wasn’t ESSENTIAL for us to go there. On the other hand, we desperately needed soil for our tomatoes, basil, and some other plants that we grow for food. How can it be any less important than thousands of rolls of toilet paper that people have been hoarding since day one? Tomatoes are food, after all. Who knows, maybe the next time something bad happens they will be our home survival food. I’ve heard that many people started buying guns and ammunition... Well, folks, who knows, I think I am right to consider home growing food essential enough.
The thing is, Lowe’s was PACKED. There was no line, no one respected the new “6 feet apart” rule, and people (including the elderly ones!) wandered along the isles with plants practically bumping into each other.
About 2/3 of the people wore masks, some store-bought, some handmade. The other ones didn’t (again, including many elderly people). At this point I felt almost like I was hallucinating because the world seemed to be split into two. World number 1 had all these people in masks, death statistics, lack of ventilators, and non-stop panic-producing heavily censored news, and World number 2 was the regular one where a bunch of carefree people came shopping for their marigolds and cherry tomatoes and fertilizers in the middle of a warm sunny day.
I didn’t even know anymore which of the versions was real, but just being there somehow bothered me, as if my reality perception point shifted and I found myself in some weird parallel reality that was no less real.
Store workers had these new glass screens blocking their upper body from customers, but they were pointless because they didn’t stay behind them for a single minute. Workers didn’t wear masks either, and when they checked out products or helped customers, they stood right next to the people, like a touch away, and made contact with everything.
- reporting from a big Los Angeles county city, and hoping you are all well
P.S. By the way, you know, no one can actually explain this whole toilet paper craziness. I’ve asked some people and no one could answer. It is perplexing. Why toilet paper, out of all things? I would understand stocking drinking water, canned food, maybe survival equipment... And yes, personal hygiene IS important, but I don’t understand the necessity of such amounts... whole boxes, boxes on top of boxes... as if we were not humans but ducks or some other animals who do “number 2” every 5 minutes. We live in a strange, strange world.