What a strange and turbulent time we’re living in right now. People who have always hated their jobs are busy protesting at state capitals to open them back up so that they can get back to bitching about how they hate their job, only now with the added bonus of possibly transmitting a deadly virus.
But really, I get the frustration. First and foremost, people are hurting. The Economy in general is tanking but on an individual level, we all have bills to pay and things that we need to survive that all cost money, money that we can’t make if our employer can’t operate. On top of that a lot of people are put into the position of helping their children navigate the new online learning environment which, as some have pointed out, has really shown parents that teachers may not be the problem. But it’s also added stress to families in a tough and unprecedented time.
In short, everything about the time of Corona kind of sucks.
So, last week (maybe it was last month…what is time anymore?!) my brother was busy catching up on his Facebook, it had been several minutes since he last checked it, and discovered a video of people driving around “Icing” their neighbors. Now if you’re not familiar with “icing” it is the act of hiding a bottle of Smirnoff Ice malt liquor somewhere you know someone will find it and when they do, they have to get down on one knee and chug the whole thing. Now there are several other variations to the rules, but that’s the basics.
When we were in college we heard of people hiding them in the tank of toilets and then disconnecting the flush valve chain so that when you would take the tank cover off you would see the Ice and have to chug it. People are pretty creative with this little game.
Now these people in the video obviously weren’t partying at a house or even in large groups, because quite frankly that would be pretty damn stupid with everything that’s going on, but instead they were driving around, leaving Ice on doorsteps, ringing the bell and getting back in their cars to video it. Social Distance Icing…amazing.
Ryan and I were bored. We had spent the day hanging out with two of the coolest kids around (my niece and nephew) and Ryan wanted to get out of the house. We weren’t drinking but honestly, we really have been missing our friends. Be it the ones we generally get together and play basketball with every Sunday, or the game night crowd or so many others that we just wanted to check in with so we figured, what the hell.
We loaded up the twins (Ryan’s father of the year mug is in the mail), made a quick stop at the liquor store and we were off.
Ryan’s definitely the more adventurous one when it comes to stuff like this, and I have to admit that I was a little apprehensive about the whole ordeal when we first started but we got to the first friend’s house and he took down the Ice like a champ and from a distance we were even able to chat with him for a little bit. At the next house our friends, a married couple, competed with the wife kicking her husband’s butt with nothing but smiles during the whole experience. We then stopped at a friend’s place who does daycare. She still had kids there but her husband was also home, so we set him up and as soon as we left the wife made us promise to come back to get her later!
We hit several other friends until we finally ran out of Ice, and what we found was that something we all used to hate getting done to us was something that was now such a great excuse to share a few laughs over and even get to chat and check in with each other to make sure we were all doing alright.
We have some friends who have some more severe medical conditions to consider during this time which we figured it would be best to avoid completely right now, but thanks to online platforms like Zoom and House Party, we are still able to check in with them and see how they’re doing. In fact, if you haven’t used those platforms to get together with friends, you’re missing out. We’ve gotten together with our college buddies on Zoom a couple of times here and last weekend, my buddy TJ and I decided to close down the party just like old times, via Zoom. The only difference was that when we were in college one of us would go use the bathroom and the other one would just kind of hang out at the booth until they got back but this time when I came back from using the facility TJ was filling his face with smoked pork butt in his kitchen.
Covid-19, Coronavirus, has been a terrible thing for us as a country and for pretty much everyone on earth to have to go through, but I think it’s important that we remember that we’re in this together and although times are difficult we have to take advantage of all that is still good, even great that we still can.
I miss my friends, I miss hanging out with them and having a few beers, or working on projects, or raising a ton of money for cancer research. It looks like it’ll be a while before we can do any of that again together, so in the meantime get yourself a case of Smirnoff Ice, go knock on a few of your friend’s doors and show them you’re still thinking of them. It’s not a hug, but in the time of corona, it’s what we’ve got.
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