America Is Back, Kind Of

It’s great to be out. Well, me, not you.

It is a matter of perception whether or not this summer is the Hot Vaxx Summer or The Summer Of The Delta Variant. As someone who is fully vaccinated and has, if I’m being honest, run out of patience with the segment of the unvaccinated who both have the access to vaccines and the opportunity for education but have refused each, I will confess to being in the former camp: I am watching movies and going to sporting events and drinking in bars and doing all the things I didn’t get to do for a year because there was a pandemic going on out there that I wanted to be certain I wasn’t making worse. I want everyone to get vaccinated, and it is tragic when someone gets sick or dies because they didn’t, but if I’ve learned anything from this pandemic, it’s that trying to persuade the purposely unreasonable of anything is a fool’s errand. Please get vaccinated. But if you don’t, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going to go do all the cool things you get to do when you’re vaccinated. You should join me. But I cannot help it if you do not.

The real world, outside my house and outside my mask, is even better than I remembered it. The sun shines brighter, the grass grows greener, the beer tastes colder, the conversations feel deeper and more resonant, even if they’re not. The pandemic was a shock to the system, and…