The Popcorn Stand: Maintaining normalcy
Today is officially the third anniversary of when COVID-19 came to Tulare County. It was on March 11, 2020 Sierra View Medical Center reported the first case of COVID in Tulare County.
Since I was on vacation last week I didn’t get a chance to write about how last weekend was the third anniversary of the last normal weekend of our lives. Of course nothing seems to be normal anymore as if anything was ever normal.
This weekend is certainly showing that with the major storms wreaking havoc and causing flooding in our area. Of course we’ve had these kinds of storms before that have wreaked this kind of havoc and flooding. But since we haven’t experienced one of these atmospheric river events or whatever you want to call it what we’re going through now probably feels like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Because it does really seem alien.
I’ve written many times before about one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies “Tombstone.” Wyatt Earp laments to Doc Holliday all he ever wanted was a normal life. “There’s no such thing as a normal life,” Holliday responds. “There’s just life.”
I find myself constantly lamenting the same way Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp character lamented about wanting a “normal life.” What I actually mean is sometimes I really just want a “simple life,” certainly simpler than the one I have now. But there’s no such as a “simple life,” either and I also always realize when it comes right down to it, I’ve got it pretty good as far as my life is concerned.
It looks like we will really never return to “normal” again. But that has always been the case. We never really returned to normal after 9/11.
Life was changed forever after December 7, 1941. Here in Porterville nothing will ever be the same again after February 18, 2020 when a fire destroyed our library and killed Porterville Fire Captain Ray Figueroa and Firefighter Patrick Jones.
But we continue to press on. And after March 11, 2020 we pressed on, although admittedly we didn’t do too much pressing on at first.
March 11, 2020 was a Wednesday and two days after that day all you know what broke loose and everything was pretty much shut down. The first nonnormal weekend.
So this is the third anniversary of the first nonnormal weekend. So it seems fitting we’re experience a not so normal weather event that’s again upending our lives on the third anniversary of the first nonnormal weekend.
We still haven’t really fully recovered and maybe we’ll never fully recovered. For the most part, we’ve pretty much returned to “normal” when it comes to everything we do.
At first we thought this COVID thing may last a few weeks or at most a few months. Eventually it looks like we’ve come to accept that we’re always going to have to live with COVID like we live with the flu.
And of course I was among those who were the most wrong about this thing. I’ve pointed out before my lack of understanding about how serious COVID was going to be when it came to what I wrote will always be there for posterity.
We’ve come to call it The New Normal, which to me is a pretty lame term, because again things were never really normal. As I’ve already pointed out there are many times we’ve gone through The New Normal including after December 7, 1941, 9/11 and February 18, 2020.
So when we say we want a “normal life,” what we’re really saying is we want a “simple life.” But we are also saying that we want to return to some kind of normalcy in our lives. I mean we don’t want things to be spinning out of control like it seemed to be for the longest time after the “first non-normal weekend.”
But then arguably the best way to maintain some form of normalcy is not to worry about things you can’t control. And how to deal with things you can’t control.
Like we can’t control the weather. Or COVID. But we can obviously control how we respond to those things.
So we can maintain some kind of normalcy.
Charles Whisnand is The Porterville Recorder Editor. Contact him at cwhisnand@portervillerecorder.com or 784-5000, extension 1048.