Elder Advice - Thinking Inside the Box – Week 19
19… if COVID was born here it would be old enough to drink. Which is what I mused about while I stood in line at the LCBO. In the hot sun. With dozens and dozens of my neighbours. Who also need help coping with COVID as the weeks wears on. And on.
Week 19. Alcohol consumption may not be for everyone. Although I cannot for a moment understand why that would be.
I hear some have decided to manage COVID by lying on the couch, crying, wrapped in that ugly afghan that Nana made, watching 50 First Dates or 50 Shades of Grey - for the 50th time.
Others, like my friend who used to spend her leisure time making docents cry, while away the days complaining about white male privilege … although I have noted over the past several months that most of those complainers are the same people who are miffed that the rosé they ordered is not quite chilled enough.
Others, marginally more energetic, have decided to focus their energies on addressing what we can all agree is the over-arching critical concern of our time – statues to the undeserving and the re-naming of streets.
Case in point. Sir John A MacDonald, who like many historical figures - make that ALL historical figures - was imperfect. How surprisingly that so many younger people just found that out. Those who stayed awake in history class have known it for decades. Anyway, it’s true. Sir John A inexplicably failed to follow all the rules we made up long after he died. But rather than tear down the statues rightfully erected to commemorate a man who more than redressed any required balance by extraordinary acts of leadership and nation building, I propose we let the complainers dig him up and yell at him for the full duration of their 30 second attention span.
And don’t get me started on Dundas Street. Only serious history students even know it is named after Sir Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville. And Sir Henry, contrary to the current ill-informed allegations, was a pragmatic abolitionist whose clever legislative work in the UK ensured abolition occurred decades before it otherwise would have.
It is almost the end of July. Can we collectively put a time limit on all these distracting activities so we can turn our collective attention, sooner rather than later, to the serious problems that need to be addressed: lack of equal opportunity, the economic wreckage wrought by the COVID response, climate change, the rise of autocrats, the fall of liberals, and the pandemic of ideological nonsense?
Except for alcohol consumption of course. No need to limit that. And let me remind you: sociologically, I am in the “Elderly” Protected Class now and, just like the others, cannot be contradicted in any way.