One Thing or Another: The Old Normal

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I believe we will look back on this time, perhaps calling it The Great Pandemic of 2020, or something equally grand to match a cataclysm of such scale, and view it as a before-and-after moment in our lives. We have those throughout our journeys on Earth, when the paths we’re on are disturbed by eruptions or implosions, or deaths that leave us without parts of ourselves: a parent abandons us to the whims of human existence, a loved one says goodbye for the last time, or doesn’t manage to say anything at all before a final breath.

For me those times have included a plague called AIDS, when, as a young man in my twenties, I watched in horror as friend after friend, acquaintance after acquaintance, vanished from the world, sometimes in front of me, but most often as a short and brutal retelling. So-and-so had died, did I know? Now I did. Was I surprised? Not in the least.

Then there was 9/11, when I worked at Reuters News in their Times Square offices. I got to work that gorgeous Tuesday morning and saw people gathered at a corner window on the 23rd floor. We could see the Twin Towers from there, and one of them had been hit by a plane. Everyone assumed at first it was an accident, that some very unlucky pilot of a small plane had hit the building. I called my boss who was in London and told him to watch the news. It wasn’t long after that we realized what had really happened, and spent the day in a fog of despair as the world we knew it was forever changed.

The financial and housing crisis of 2008? Check. The election of a Black president? Check. Marriage equality, allowing me and my partner to become husbands under the law? Big check. And now this. A nation hunkered down, functioning as best it can with webcams and waves from across deserted streets.

One thing that’s clear to me as that whatever the new normal becomes as we slowly, eventually, return to a damaged world, it will never be what it once was. Handshakes and sneezes will forever arouse suspicion. Many of the jobs lost will not come back, as companies discover their ability to operate with fewer people, or to leave them at home.

It’s going to be a slow recovery, but, like a patient who survives being burned, or who has her limbs rearranged or her body altered, we will not be who we were. As for whether that’s a good thing, only time will tell. But the old normal will be gone, never to return.

Mark McNease is the author of ten novels, two short story collections and miscellaneous fiction. He’s the founder and editor of LGBTSr.com, “where age is embraced and life is celebrated.” He was the co-creator of the Emmy and Telly winning children’s program Into the Outdoors, and he currently hosts the One Thing or Another Podcast.