Bad Poetry: Covidiot

(If it's true that there's a general tendency for more "liberal" types to show more interest in coronavirus quarantine--although I myself doubt this--can we count this post as Liberal Post #4?)

This is the first Thanksgiving holiday where the Internet's been on the guest list, in my life. Last night I was surfing the'Net and found a real blast from the past--songs by C.W. McCall. 

Supposed truck driver McCall was a character created for radio ads by an advertising man who couldn't sing, but found that no great obstacle to producing country-western hit songs. Instead, he made McCall one of the commercial music industry's first rappers, chanting his rhymes in between choruses sung by backup bands. His best known song was "Convoy," which generated a movie (with updated verses reflecting the movie's plot) and several imitations. 

The best of the imitations, for which I couldn't find anything at all on Goodsearch, was a protest against the sensible 55mph speed limit called "Yovnoc," in which "That turtle in the girdle was doin' five-five, right wher' she oughta be. But I slowed my rate so I wouldn't tailgate, and I was doin' about fifty-three. Oh, we're gonna have a Yovnoc across the U.S.A., a two-lane legal Yovnoc, everybody watch and wait," and in the final verse somebody was driving "minus three." Any relation to reality was strictly coincidence. That was what I thought made the rhymes so hilarious. 

McCall also recorded a song YouTubers described as "haunting" that envisioned an instant cultural-and-environmental apocalypse, very different from the gradual cancerous growth of "Agenda 21" but having similar outcomes: "It's only gon' be about an hour before they dam your favorite river, so you can water-ski just one more reservoir...and that one last tired old eagle bites the sand, and all of that high and mighty scenery's gon' be levelled to the ground by...mindless strip mines across the land...There won't be no country music! There won't be no rock-and-roll!" Though the timing was all wrong, I was just the right age to appreciate this song when it came out of radios in the 1970s. It's still a favorite.

Then this morning the following poem prompt was in my blog feed: https://poetsandstorytellersunited.blogspot.com/2020/11/writers-pantry-48-words-words-words.html .

The word "Covidiot" reminded me of something documented at this web site, years ago...Stupidity happens to everybody now and then, even me. 

I grew up knowing how it feels to be a theoretically healthy person with a very weak immune system--the person who catches every little cold that goes around and has symptoms for weeks, and everybody thinks the person is making it up, and so the person is forced to go to primary school while conspicuously ill. Not fun. And then in my thirties I found out how it feels to be a healthy adult with a robust immune system who picks up and passes on a harmless little "summer cold" and thus inadvertently causes the death of, in that case, a lovable sickly child. 

And then, in my forties...I recognized the woman who'd moved out to a remote computer center, from the main telephone company office. I thought from her manner that she'd made that move because she was an introvert, so if I just didn't talk to her or bother her we'd get along fine, while I posted about the computer center and thus encouraged other people to discover it. And I posted jokes about the harmless little streppy-bugs a sickly kitten kept breathing on me, and how if people annoyed me I'd breathe on them, and strep stinks. Streptococcus bacteria do have an odor; it's what comes to mind when I think of the word "foul." Hello? Though most streptococcus bacteria are harmless to most people, many people who were already in poor condition die from streptococcal pneumonia too. I thought the woman was acting idiotic about the way my nose clogged up while I waited for her to open the building on cold afternoons. I never once thought to ask whether she was acting that way because she was, or was living with someone who was, taking immune system suppressants. Local lurkers drove out to keep the nice free computer center open! They brought their friends! They brought children! And the telephone company employee, also obviously under the influence of the Cloud of Stupidity, never tried to explain, but just gave me increasingly evil looks until she could quit the job. And the company shut down the computer center. 

Maybe the pathogens themselves have something to do with this kind of behavior.

In the "Know Your Pests" posts there's a link to a science site that describes how caterpillars with certain infectious diseases seem compelled to assume an "inverted V" position, in which they hang upside down from twigs with both ends hanging down below their middles. The inverted V position probably offers some relief from some form of pain for the caterpillar. Its real function, however, is to benefit the disease germs. From this position the infected caterpillars "rain" germs down on other caterpillars. The researcher describing this compared it with the way some cold sufferers seem to crave companionship, and wondered whether virus and bacteria are evolving abilities to drive their victims to spread these germs to others. 

This is not, of course, the primary reason why some people have been actively seeking out the dreaded coronavirus. For the healthy people who have hardly any noticeable symptoms as they built up immunity, it was reasonable to want to have the virus in summer so you'd be safe before flu, school, work, and holidays came along. (Unfortunately a few people, like Herman Cain, overestimated their resistance.) For some people who've already decided not to bother with expensive, painful, high-risk treatments for painful, fatal, yucky diseases, it's reasonable to want to die of pneumonia before the cancer becomes unbearably painful or the brain deterioration comes between you and your family. 

When I woke up with a peculiar kind of cough and mild pericarditis I remember thinking, "Could this be the dreaded coronavirus? Please, God? May I have coronavirus now, please?" and being absolutely delighted, at least on my own behalf, by the evidence that that was what I had late in August. 

So, yes, if you live alone, or can arrange to live alone, or live with likeminded people, deliberately exposing yourself to coronavirus makes sense to me. 

Exposing other people, or people who will be around other people? Not so much. You don't know their level of resistance. Some people who try very hard to become healthy, go to school, play sports, have jobs, etc., are really not healthy at all. You can't tell by looking. Especially not about people like my younger self, living with a serious low-grade chronic condition for which adults didn't check before they told me "You're healthy as a horse if you'd just stop being lazy."

At how many offices would adults actually have conversations like, "Hello, Joe. Have you lost a lot of weight, or is it just a different hairstyle that makes you look so much thinner."

"Hello, Jane. No, actually I'm having chemotherapy and radiation treatments. I may be slightly radioactive. Stand back from me if you are or ever plan to be pregnant. So you were saying this wig looks lifelike, eh?"

"Yes, but actually I've had myself spayed because I don't want to risk pregnancy when I've been having so much trouble with lupus and with the immune suppressants I'm taking for it..."

Not likely. So I've been saying for years that we all need to learn to maintain a nice healthy social distance from everybody, all the time. Even in groups of healthy young people who think streptococcus is mainly a subject for jokes about its odor. Feeling "lonely" and wanting to be closer to other people can, of course, still be merely a symptom of extroversion, or of a physical attraction to a particular person, but who knows whether it's the diseases that make us act like Covidiots, or Rhinovidiots, or Streptidiots...

COVIDIOTS SONG

(Rap)

Well, he disinfects the counter with a mask tied on his face,

Then he runs around to lift a milk jug, and he is out of his place.

He orders a customer, "Mask up!" Oh, he's brave to take a stand!

Then he gives somebody change and presses the coins into the hand.

(Chorus)

He's a Covidiot! Covidiots! Where do they all come from?

(Repeat, with variations, until it forms a tune.)

(Rap)

Well, she goes to wake the children up, and they'd rather stay in bed.

They clutch the sheets and pillows tight around each little head.

Say, "Mommy, my throat's prickly, ears are ringing, skin is tickly,

No, there's nothing wrong at school, it's just me, I'm feeling sickly.

My nose itches, too-tight britches, oh, I feel no urge to roam.

Can't remember since September, and I just want to stay at home."

"No fever? Nothing's wrong with you," replies this viral fool.

"Wear a sweater if you're chilly, and get yourself off to school."

(Chorus)

She's a Fluidiot! Fluidiots! Where do they all come from?

(Rap)

He's a good hard-working fellow! Oh, he's never missed a day!

But his eyes are looking glassy. As you draw near, you hear him say,

"Got the lazies, drivin' me crazy, since I crawled out of the sack!

Form'la 44 is worth payin' for! Oh, it feels like a heart attack!

Re-ti-re-ment is not for me! On the job is where I want to be!

I just beat that kid out of a cash prize, and he's only twenty-three.

Coronavirus? What, me worry? That's just a big old hoax!"

The bigger they come, the harder they fall, and this is a big guy, folks.

(Chorus)

He's a Covidiot! Covidiots! Where do they all come from?

(Rap)

Well, I've always left her quite alone, so now what can her problem be?

Once I'm in out of the cold nobody hears a word from me.

I'm just here to do my job while keeping strictly to myself,

But it looks from the way she's acting as if she thinks I have bad breath.

Oh, by the way, I spent yesterday with someone who had a bad cold.

They said "Will I die?" and I said "Why? You are not even old." 

I stopped at the store, that's what it's for, bought lozenges for my throat,

'Cos the cold wind makes it prickle so, I can hardly sing a note.

(Chorus)

(I'm)(S/He's) a Streptidiot! Streptidiots! Where do they all come from?

(Rap)

I don't know where they come from, but I know 

where a lot of people wish they would go...