If you’re starting to get seriously sick of being stuck in lockdown, prepare to feel all the feels, because you’re definitely going to relate to this story about someone who is desperate to get out of the house and experience life’s simple pleasures again: this man just wants quarantine to end so he can go try on clothes at Red Lobster.
Ugh, yes. We feel this 100 percent. The pandemic seriously needs to end, STAT!
Brent DeBoer of Raleigh, North Carolina has spent the past year working from home and restricting his trips out of the house to the absolute essentials, and at this point, he’d give almost anything to go back the everyday pre-Covid activities he took for granted, like enjoying coffee dates with friends, working out at the gym, and showing up at his local Red Lobster with a shopping bag full of Izod polos and spending a relaxing evening trying on the shirts one by one in the restaurant bathroom’s handicapped stall. Before the pandemic, it never even occurred to Brent that there might come a day when he would not be able to walk into to his favorite seafood chain, order a single Cheddar Bay biscuit, and then ask his waiter to help button him into a short-sleeved collared shirt and take pictures of him on a disposable camera he brought from home. But sadly, Brent has not had the chance to do so in nearly a year, and every time he walks by a Red Lobster, he feels a pang of sadness for the old, pre-2020 days, when trying on swim trunks at a restaurant was a weekly occurrence, not a distant dream.
Yep, we all miss the way life used to be too, Brent. Take us back to the before times!
Since the pandemic began, it’s been a discombobulating time to say the least, and by now we’ve all accepted that there are some basic human interactions that are out of reach for us right now. But that doesn’t make it any less painful for Brent to accept that, instead of parading through a Red Lobster dining room in a new suit from the adjoining Men’s Warehouse and asking for other patrons’ opinions by round of applause, he has to order the same suit online, then put it on, and then log into Omegle to get feedback from strangers, many of whom are total weirdos. Life just isn’t the same when you can’t casually visit an elderly neighbor without wearing a mask, stroll through grocery store aisles without worrying about a deadly virus, or sashay into a Red Lobster to try on clearance sweaters and feed the ones that don’t fit to the lobsters in the lobster tank. But sadly, that’s just the reality we have to accept for the foreseeable future.
Pretty much all of us can relate to Brent’s frustrations in one way or another, and it’s nice that we can at least all go through this trying time together. Let’s get our vaccines and end this thing for good so we can all do those simple things we love again. And until then, stay strong, everybody!
