There is no 'echoing green' outside my front door, but a gang of pre-teen kids once congregated on the street corner, deciding what to do with their day. Running up and down the busy road while shouting was the usual consensus. Such random exertion was obviously a competitive game of sorts although its rules remained a mystery to me despite having taken part in similar activity at the same age.
Coronavirus has now confined these kids to their homes, of course, since the parents whose risk management policy apparently allowed for their offspring dodging speeding cars and trucks are afraid of invisible Covid 19 infection. I suppose a covert enemy always increases paranoia, but still ... the threat of Martian invasion when I was young would not prevent my father from forcing me to go out and get some fresh air. Can Coronavirus really be more deadly than the synthetic world of the 1970s?
Discretion is the better part of valor, however, and my neighbors are right to follow the latest precautionary advice about social distancing and so on. I've seen some of them at the supermarket is full Hazmat gear. Our sidewalks are not six feet wide so I cling to the curb while they shrink into the shadows of apartment buildings if I pass them when walking my dog. It's possible they're afraid of my pandemic mask. It's modeled on those worn by ancient Greek thespians, albeit with tight-lipped features rather than an openly bewailing Theban mouth, but still unmistakably the grim face of a tragedian.
Gazing down at the now deserted and silent street corner from an upstairs window, I feel like an audience of one impatiently waiting for the curtain to rise on the second act. God knows this intermission has lasted long enough already. My seat in the stalls is unbearably uncomfortable; the theater bar has run out of both food and booze; and the less said about the toilet paper situation in the restroom the better. So turn the streetlamp spotlight on and let the kids resume their endless pantomime. It's a noisy, incoherent play but it's better than sitting here in the window watching nothing like a lugubrious Edward Hopper picture.
