The Simple Pleasure of Whipping Out Your Vaccine Card

Finally I get the chance.

The first thing I did on April 12, 2021, was get my second shot of the Moderna vaccine at my local Publix grocery store here in Athens, Georgia. (While I was there, I also picked up some sliced ham.) The second thing I did on April 12, 2021, was drive to my local UPS Store, where I immediately had 15 laminated copies made. I had stumbled my way through a once-in-every-100-years pandemic, and now I had the vaccine that would keep me safe and allow me to return to some semblance of the life I’d had before. I made 15 copies because I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose it. I wanted to make sure I was completely covered.

And then, for about four months, I didn’t need any of them. I had to show my vaccine card only once, to enter Yankee Stadium to watch a baseball game on May 1, and when I was back at the park a couple of weeks later, they were no longer asking. I imagined a world where that little card would be my passport to the future, a future away from the pandemic, a way to prove that I had done my part — that I’d survived it and wanted everyone else to as well. But all 15 sat in an Important Papers drawer in my office, unused, unappreciated. All that for nothing.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen this as the route to get to this point — cases rising…