I continue walking. One hand steadies the leashes of my two dogs. The other fumbles for headphones. Headphones to block out the tirade of obscenities hurled at my back.
Voices of NPR’s hushed broadcast proved ill-equipped to dam the flow of vomited insults and phrases. Shaken, not stirred, I walk on, putting one block, then a second, between myself and the 40-year-old adolescents consumed in their explosive temper tantrums.
Eventually, the yelling stops, but more so from the lack of air huffed and puffed into their struggling lungs, than any distance I made. Their lungs gave way before their anger could.
While my body moved, my mind struggled as it fought to focus. The two adults, sick with anger, had cut my head open and used it as their own trash can to vomit hatred and aggression and insecurities into my open skull. Now my brain sloshed against their words. It numbed me, and yet for some reason, it didn’t completely shock me. I’d seen it time and time again on the news, on social media, on the radio and in newspapers. Modern America.
An America coming out of the pandemic.
Forgetting to be Human
Growing up in Michigan, whenever my dad would step inside the house following a snowstorm commute, he’d often say, “People have forgotten how to drive.” While in Georgia, a similar line would slip from my lips after driving through heavy rainfall.
And now, with the world opening back up, people have forgotten how to act around other people.
They’ve forgotten how to be human.
Perhaps that’s to be expected. When a cut of meat marinates overnight it takes on the flavor of the marinade. When people sit inside for months at a time, they marinate in their own thoughts and ideas.
If a judgmental person stews in a broth of their own hatred for a year, they’re not going to come out fresh and made anew. They’re going to come out with the taste of their hatred, now absorbed deep into every cell of their body.
You can tell a great deal about someone based on who they spend their time with. But what happens when they’ve spent all their time with themselves? There’s no rub-off. There’s no transfer of thoughts or ideas. Everything they have to give is now steeped, unabridged, and unfiltered version of themselves. Sometimes this can be good. But many times, unfiltered thoughts and ideas are dangerous. Or, at the very least, incomplete. It’s why books have drafts. Movies have rough cuts. Newspapers have editors. There’s a checks and balances in place to make sure the story to be told is smoothed out, refined, and improved upon.
In life, we have our friends and family. We have interactions with strangers. We travel and experience varying cultures. We try new foods. We converse and listen and feel and love. All of this edits and smooths our own story. Our own ideas. It improves our ability to be human.
At least until the pandemic.
For many, the pandemic stripped away the ability to edit and tweak and grow. If most are like me, they are their own worst editors. I can sand and soften, but it is always done under the guise of my own eyes. I cannot fully edit myself. I cannot even see my full self. It takes the world to help with that. But take out the world and what’s left is unrefined.
It’s why so many have come out of the pandemic as worse versions of themselves. The angry are angrier. The hateful are more venomous. The outspoken have turned up the volume.
And it’s all on full display.
Interactions Going Sideways
I recently completed a nine-month road trip around the country. Alone with my dogs, country roads my compass, I flowed through the United States on a continued wave of pavement and pebble. I saw and experienced aspects of life in ways I never imagined. And the unexpected often proved the most inlightening. It very much was my own “Travels with Charley,” (although my journey was thrice the time of Steinbeck’s).
Upon the conclusion of the trip, I stayed with my sisters. Learning about their current lives. Growing closer to them and conversing with them in ways I haven’t since we all lived under the same roof, 17 years earlier.
One day, I took my dogs for a walk. Whenever I walk the dogs I do my best to avoid confrontation with other dogs. Not that there will necessarily be one, but it’s just easier to avoid it than cross fingers and hope for the best. That usually entails crossing to the other side of the road if I see another dog approaching. My dogs are strange in that they pick and choose which dogs they are cool with. Some they love. Others they want nothing to do with.
On this particular morning as I walked the dogs, one relieved herself and, as I waited to pick up what she left behind two people approached, accompanied by a pair of small poof dogs. It would be at this point I would cross to the other side of the road, but couldn’t as I waited for my pup to finish. The walkers didn’t deviate. They simply kept walking to me. My dogs grew rigid at the approaching group, and once the two poof dogs were a tail-wag away mine started barking. The owners just stood there, gawking, not moving. The thing that worries me is I have a pit mix. Of the five dogs I’ve owned over the years she’s the happiest, most loving (she has three legs and I adopted her the day after her leg was removed, so between me carrying her up flights of stairs and helping her learn how to walk again she has a fabulous affinity for people and especially kids), but if there’s any kind of skirmish, the variables are not looked at. She’s a pit, end of discussion. It’s the main reason why I try to avoid these kinds of uncontrolled encounters.
The other owners decided, instead of walking anywhere else, they would just walk through my dogs (it’s a small town, so there are no cars, and walking in the street would have easily been an option for a momentary pass). As I juggled dogs I held my leg out to block one dog from considering any kind of lunge at the two poof pups being walked by the absent-minded owners.
And all hell broke loose.
For whatever reason, they thought I was attempting to kick one of the dogs and absolutely went into the most intense adult temper tantrum I’d ever seen in my life. They didn’t spout their anger and move on. They stopped and blocked my path. They called me every name imaginable. Gender identity and sexual preference slangs were thrown in. I was informed they had watched me for several days and I walked like a dick. More obscenities sputtered through their hyperventilating voices. Enough F-bombs to make Quinten Tarantino blush. It was one of those explosive tantrums that likely stemmed from something else. A bubbling, unstable bottle of TNT waiting to be bumped. When one wasn’t yelling the other one was, making it impossible to explain that no, nothing was getting kicked. I just wanted to protect all four dogs, despite the absent-minded owners.
After five minutes of being called every name in the book (as well as a few invented names), I moved on. And in the meantime, while I walked away to try and calm my nerves, they went to my sister’s house to continue their tantrum.
Would they have done that pre-pandemic? I’m not sure. But it erupted into such an onslaught of verbal ignorance I can only assume it came from months of stewing together inside their home. I can only pray their hatred didn’t rub off onto the pups.
Evolution
But the pandemic affects more than dog walks. An employee at a grocery store flashed me a “white power” hand sign and asked what I thought, trying to solicit a response. I’ve seen many restaurant workers verbally dumped on by tables because of short-staffed kitchens. There’s always a straw that breaks the camel's back. It just seems like backs are breaking sooner than ever before.
It seems the next stage in the evolution of humankind is to remove kind from the name.
The angry are angrier. The hateful have more hatred.
Hopefully, it’s just temporary. That people have, “forgotten how to be human,” and after some experience everyone will revert to their pre-pandemic selves.
Because the pandemic has made us worse versions of ourselves.
Which is sad. After this last year, we could all use a little more kindness in our humankind.
What could have been used to manifest a chrysalis-like outcome for society was disrupted by vitriol-infused polarization. Alvin Toffler definitely called it in his book 'The Third Wave'. I still have optimism for the human family, but not nearly as much as I had prior to the pandemic.
Love reading your work. 🥰