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Perspective: My 2020 Bingo Card Is A Bust

Alejandro Garay
/
Pixabay

Do you ever joke about what’s NOT on your imaginary “2020 Bingo Card?” I’d never have thought to include a global pandemic that would sweep in and virtually shut down civilization.

We’ve all daydreamed about working from home in our PJs, but who’d have guessed we’d be doing just that day after monotonous day?

I didn’t expect “Scavenger Hunt Grocery Shopping” to catch on, either! We hire strangers to shop our lists and then cope with the surprising substitutions that we get when what we wanted wasn’t on the shelf. Meal prep time at my house became “Chopped – the Home Version” as we took turns using “ingredients on hand” to try and craft a decent meal.

Other surprises included corona cuffing, corona babies, covi-dorces, family podding, quarantinis, and Blursday! We put athletes in bubbles and “stacked the bleachers” with stackable, cardboard fans. Fears of murder hornets swarmed in, but are now replaced with worries about those killer ticks. September snow blanketed Colorado, an earthquake shook my home state of North Carolina, and we ran out of names for tropical storms. What a year!

The list of things missing from my bingo card is definitely selective and reflects the lighter side for a reason. Sometimes we need to focus on what makes us crack a smile rather than gnash our teeth. Laughter generates feel-good hormones that give us the boost we need to handle the challenging things we must. With three more months and a major election yet to come, finding a reason to laugh is more important now than ever.

I’m Suzanne Degges-White and that’s my perspective.

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