The Cruel, Delusional Fantasy of ‘Normal’
We haven’t earned normalcy yet
We all have a reward we’re promising ourselves for when we get through the worst of the pandemic. We will get to see our friends and family again, close-up and in person; we will eat out at our favorite restaurant once more; we will go to the movies, a concert, Hamilton (and not on Disney+). Whatever your imagined pandemic survival prize is, it’s probably something that symbolizes normalcy for you, that will signal to you that, finally, we live in the After.
For me, it’s professional sports. What pleasure could be greater than watching the Mets lose gloriously, game after game? But I miss it for reasons bigger than box scores and championship rings. Professional sports are symbolic of pre-coronavirus America. Sports represent a time when we collectively had less to worry about. If sports are back, so is Normal America.
“Sports are like the reward of a functioning society,” Sean Doolittle of the Washington Nationals told the Washington Post.
We haven’t earned that reward. And the reward itself comes at too great a cost: the lives of those who bring it to us. Put in those stark but real terms, this isn’t a “reopening;” it’s a horror show.
