So here we are. Movie theaters and malls and parks and all kinds of stores and business shut down, events are canceled, the kids will probably not go back to school this year, we’re ordered to stay home except for essential travel…

In the past three weeks I have been out of the house 2 times for reasons other than work. The first time was about 2 1/2 weeks ago and you’d barely have known anything was going on (there was even TP where I went.) But over the weekend I had to get essentials from the grocery store and it was a bit like the Twilight Zone. Here’s the episode:

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The scene: A grocery store, midday on a sunny spring morning…

Inside the store, there were signs everywhere watching people to stay 6 feet apart, with bright red markers on the floors to show you how far that was, and yellow caution tape marking the spaces people must stand at when in the checkout line.

About three quarters of people were wearing face masks. They were mostly alone and silent, not making eye contact, hanging back to wait for a person to move on before approaching the same space. Little half faceless ghosts drifting around collecting chicken and flour and toilet paper.

The rest of the of the shoppers weren’t wearing masks. They were here and there and mostly in pairs or with their young children, chit-chatting away. They walked into the spaces of the masked people, as though they didn’t see them, and reached passed them to grab something off of a shelf. Their voices seemed abnormally loud.

The Masked Ones stared in horror as one of the Unmasked rubbed their eye and another got the attention of a store employee by touching their arm. Somehow the world had been ripped into two universes, superimposed upon one another. There was the real world, full of normal living people being together and going about their life as always. And then there were us, the ghosts, drifting through quietly in our little cloth prisons.

Except… Which is “real?”

You have now entered…….. the Twilight Zone.

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No really, it was kind of surreal. But the icing on the What The Hell Is Happening Cake was this unmasked guy walking through the parking lot in shorts and no shirt, like this was a perfectly normal thing to do. He didn’t look homeless and mentally unstable – which is what made it so terrifying. Like this is the new norm?

But seriously, hope you’re all staying safe and healthy. And not going completely stircrazy (just a little.)