Zeke Emanuel, former medical adviser to Barry, thinks everyone should kick it at 75* and everyone should stay home until we have a vaccine. We love it when people who have jobs tell people who lost there's to just stay at home and suck it up.
To be honest we're not sure we understand the Dem's agenda or strategy here.
But we do understand something about being unemployed, not between jobs, not out of work till the company hires you back in 6 weeks. Un. Em. Ployed.
In 1998 we did a 7 month stint. In 2000 we did an 8 month stint. We're using that terminology because being unemployed is like a goddamn prison. After we threw in the towel in April of 2001 and went back to school (online) it was over two years between paychecks.
After a time we worked out a routine, thank god. We read a lot at least, but to this day we regret not making ourselves sit down and write. We'd actually publish our first peace in 2003 and there's no reason we couldn't have pulled it off in '98 or '01 at the latest.
We didn't drink much and didn't touch drugs, thank god. But there were still a lot of sleepless nights. We'd just put our head down, feel an overwhelming tightness in our chest and just get up. We spent a lot of time sitting on the couch at 2 AM wondering what we were doing wrong and what we'd done to deserve this.
We had a lot of restless afternoons with plenty of driving around, cruising really, just to get out of the house. It was at least as stressful as being at work and we noticed we finally settled down after picking Mrs. Stroock up from work. We didn't want to answer the phone because we didn't want the person on the other end to know we were unemployed. We didn't like stepping out for the same reason. We dressed nicer than we normally would have just so we wouldn't look or feel like a derelict.
The words for the feeling: degrading, demoralizing, de-legitimizing, depressing. We should have been mainlining Prozac. And one more word: humiliating. Utterly humiliating.
The damage is permanent. This horrible residue clings to every memory of the time as if to say, 'Yeah, that was fun but it's not like you had anything to do Monday morning...' The time is never not there, it is never not a part of us, it is never not on the surface. Were the time an appendage we'd be always aware of it, like a toe or thumb.
So when a cord-yanker like Zeke Emanuel blithely says we need to stay home for 18 months regardless of the consequences he can go suck on a DNR.
*Go ahead and google it.
*Go ahead and google it.
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