By B. Craig Grafton
PROMPT—During Covid-19 ...
When everyone went into a panic mode about the COVID, I did too at first. After all, we were told by our government that this is a worldwide pandemic wherein hundreds of thousands are expected to die, even more than from the Black Plague, and it was the elderly who were the most at risk, of which I, a baby boomer, am one. So our government told us to calm down now, don't panic, don’t worry, hold on, we’re working on a vaccine to save you and it will be here shortly. Until then you’ll be okay, just fine, just as long as you do what we say.
Well the first thing they said was for us to get the masks and wear them at all times. We got the masks. We wore them at all times. We had to. Nobody would let us in the door without one on, not the grocery store, the pharmacy, or the doctor’s office, the places us old people go to a lot. Once we forgot our masks, but no problema. They gave us masks. So after that we didn't buy any more masks. Wherever we went somewhere we just said that we had forgotten our masks at home. It worked every time because they all felt sorry for us old people who are always so forgetful at times. I saved money that way. It’s good to be old, sometimes. Anyway I came away from all that thinking somebody out there is making a small fortune off of selling us those masks.
Second thing they said was to practice social distancing. I had never heard of that conglomeration of words before and didn’t know what it meant. Turns out that was a new phrase invented by our government that meant stay away from other people. How far I can’t remember. I’m old and get forgetful at times. When I want to be that is. And sometimes I repeat myself too. But in any event it meant staying a certain distance away from people so you didn’t pick up any COVID germs that those people might breathe on you or that you might breathe on them if you had the COVID germs on you. Es no problema. We always kept away from people, because we didn’t come in contact with people. We didn’t socialize. We didn’t have any friends or relatives here because we left them all on the frozen tundra of northwestern Illinois years ago when we moved here to Texas. The 1200 miles between us kept them away and that was just fine with us.
Third, they, the government, finally got the miracle drug vaccine that they said we had to take, told us to get our shot now, today, or if we didn’t we could die. Well, I didn’t know where to get one but I knew how to find out where to get one. I Googled flu shots near me and was given the name of a pharmacy which was part of a grocery store less than ten minutes from me. So I emailed the grocery store’s pharmacy and asked them if they had the vaccine. I never got an email back from them. What I got instead was a phone call, within ten minutes, from the pharmacy wanting to schedule an appointment for me to come in and get my shot. Now I had never used that pharmacy before in my entire life so they didn’t have my phone number and they couldn’t have gotten it any place else since I had an unlisted number. Couldn’t have gotten it, unless—---, the government got it for them. That was it. The government forced the phone company to fork over my number, because this was a national emergency and if they didn’t do it, they’d suffer the consequences. Needless to say no one wants to suffer governmental consequences do they now. In any event I got the shot.
The fourth thing I learned from all this was that I was richer. When I was doing my monthly bank statement I noticed that money had been put in my checking account, quite a tidy some, and somehow from looking at the entry I figured out it was from the government. I never saw this one coming, because I don’t keep up with the news. I don’t take a daily paper, I don’t watch the network news or whatever it is, and I don’t surf the net for news. At my age the news is irrelevant. Anyway I asked my wife about it. She keeps up on things surfing the net and she brought me up to date. Well, who wouldn’t be happy with free money now? Tell me that. Me, that's who. The government had access to my checking account now. I didn’t give it to them. They made the bank give it to them. And that meant that if they could put money into my account, they could take money out of my account and who knows how much and what for. They could take it out for whatever they deemed politically expedient and I couldn’t do a Goddamn blankety blank thing about it. I thought about drawing all my money out and going cash all the way from here on out but that wasn’t practical. Oh well, I’d just have to take my chances. Trust my government. Yeah right.
As to my wife she never got the flu shot and by God she wasn’t going to get one. When I asked her if she was worried about what the government would do to her if she didn’t get one, she answered affirmatively, ‘NO!’ with a roaring vengeance. The government couldn’t fire her. She didn’t work for the government. They couldn't kick her out of the military. She wasn’t in the military. She wasn’t associated with any person, place, thing, or noun where flu shots were mandatory and if you didn’t get one, they kicked you out. She had no religious claims about taking the shots. No, she had one reason and one reason only for not taking the shot, and that reason was that no government was never ever going to tell her what to do.
Well, I got to thinking about all this and after a while I agreed with her and came up with my own conclusion as to the COVID. That conclusion being that this wasn’t about the COVID at all. It was about the government finding out how far they could reach into our lives, see what and how much they could get away with, see if we would mindlessly robotically obey their every command, and for them to gather information about us and our assets that they could use to control our lives the way they wanted them to be controlled just like those communist and socialist countries control their people’s lives from cradle to grave. This was a crisis they couldn’t let go to waste.
Pandemic, unprecedented, historic times aside, I didn’t fall for it this time and when the government came out with a booster shot, I stood with The Defiant Ones this time, crossed the line in the sand, and refused to get another shot. If I went down fighting, well so be it. After all that was the Texan thing to do now, wasn’t it? To date I haven’t got one and by God I’m not going to get one and let some drug company get rich off me by using my tax money to pay for it.
So I’m still here, flu shot or not, and at my age everyday is my last day. Unless of course I wake up tomorrow. Then it's deja vu all over again as to the COVID anyway.
B. Craig Grafton is a retired attorney. His books are published by Two Gun Publishing. He writes from Canyon Lake, Texas.
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