What the future might look like

What the future might look like, I don't know. Will more people work from home? Only the future people reading this will know.
    Right now I feel like I'm living a Bizarro World* version of Father Knows Best**. Before I head to

The Bridge at 6 PM on a past Friday

work in the morning, I go visit my mother. I don't come within ten feet of her and yes I know that sounds very WASP of me, but it really isn't normal. I go to work and after punching in I go to my desk, grab an antibacterial wipe and wipe down everything in the office I might have to touch during the day. I then go to the bathroom and wash my hands with extra soap for what I think is twenty seconds. In between the finger, over the backs of the hands, up to the wrists. Then I wash them off, grab a paper towel, dry my hands and before I toss it in the garbage I use it to open the door. Here is where I get fancy. In one swift motion I push the lever handle down and pull the door open and push it the rest of the way open with my foot as I do a behind the back with the paper towel hitting the garbage with just net. Now I am ready to attack the papers that have piled up on my desk over the last twelve hours. On a recent morning the pile of papers only got deeper and the phone calls kept coming so that by the end of the day I only had just cleared my desk of the days work. forget all the stuff that was on it before I got there. This past Monday, after working the whole weekend putting in clients and orders I walked in and declared to my boss Ted, "I'm all caught up" Ah, what hubris***. I sat down to my disinfected desk to the sound of the fax machine. It would continue for the next three days. At the end of each day I'd laugh and say "I'll catch up" By the end of the week I had almost

I'm fashionably ready to work

sixty new customers. Management was talking about shutting off new customers. Over the week the tension in my neck and shoulders had caused me to have headaches and started my left eye to hurt. Sometime around mid afternoon on Wednesday I decided that I would worry about only what is at the top of my pile. The rest didn't exist. For some reason I was able to do that. That was also the day I was told along with the only other guy who didn't wear a mask we had to now wear a mask along with a hair net anytime we went into the kitchen or came near a crowd. The governor had declared all people needed to cover their faces if they were to be anywhere in a crowd. For a governor I hated two months ago, he has really been on top of this COVID-19 virus.
     So now it is Sunday, after that week where I got about sixty new customers in. I worked last week eleven hour to catch up. Then on Saturday I worked eight and a quarter hours and today I have thirty-two customers to finish up. And yes I'm delaying doing it by writing this. I'm tired of working, but I want to come in and tell my boss Monday, it is done.
      Teri works from home and I wonder if she will miss the commute she has now. She stays up a little later at night, sleeps in a little later in the morning, puts on sweats and heads to the dining room table or up to the attic to work. The girls at home sleep in each morning and Nastia has online classes that she is finding very difficult to do. She now has to depend on herself and can't go running to a teacher to get help. She occasionally goes to work during the day or in the evening.
     Elena, is working almost full time at ShopRite and maybe for the short term or who knows maybe longer she will continue there. With BOCES closed and most likely not to reopen until the fall this is her future.
      Everybody's life is sort of in a holding pattern. All our worlds revolve around this house mostly. Will the future look something like this? People working from home more. Radio and TV new anchors host their programs from home and I'm sure they are getting acquainted with family members and what it is like to have time around the house. Future people what is it like out there now?



*Bizarro World: The imperfect duplicate of Superman, the chalk faced hero lives on the cube-shaped world of Bizarro where everything is the opposite of life on Earth. Beauty is hated, ugliness is revered, and it is a crime to make anything perfect.


** Father Knows Best. From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ˌFather ˌKnows ˈBest a US television programme made in the 1950s, whose characters were considered to be a perfect happy family with typical American values.





*** Hubris | Definition of Hubris by Merriam-Webster

To the Greeks, hubris referred to extreme pride, especially pride and ambition so great that they offend the gods and lead to one's downfall. Hubris was a character flaw often seen in the heroes of classical Greek tragedy, including Oedipus and Achilles