Dear Readers,
There I was, in the produce department of the mostly empty grocery store early one morning, selecting a tomato for the BLT I was planning for lunch.
It was a time-consuming, tedious task for as we all know, “only two things money can’t buy — that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes.” The perfect BLT required the perfect slice of heirloom tomato.
After completing the touch test of every tomato in the bin, I was just starting the smell test when I heard what sounded like a heavy sigh. I turned and saw a gentleman standing about six feet from me, watching me with what appeared to be a faint smile on his face. I returned the smile and continued my quest.
After another 30 seconds or so, I heard that fake, throat-clearing sound, “Ah-hem!” It had come from that same sighing gentleman who was now definitely not smiling.
“I’m sorry,” I said walking over to the man. “Do I know you?”
“No, not at all!” he snarled, “I’m just keeping social distance while waiting for you to FINALLY finish with the tomatoes!”
Social faux pas
After two and a half long years of strictly adhering to social distancing rules in all public spaces, I should have known why he was standing there, but I was clueless! Somehow, I had suddenly and completely forgotten all about those essential six feet!
I mumbled a hurried apology and, abandoning my cart by the rutabagas, fled to the parking lot where I cowered in my car to reflect upon my major social faux pas.
The only explanation, the only excuse I could come up with, was that I was entering my second childhood, reverting back to a childhood filled with the opposite of proper social distancing.
A two-bedroom starter house for six people did not afford one the luxury of maintaining six feet of separation. The tiny bedrooms were crowded, the single bathroom was crowded (privacy was in shorter supply than space was, especially when Nonie was visiting), the small eat-in kitchen was crowded, and the living room, with a couch, dad’s easy chair, a rabbit-eared TV, the console radio, my three by three piece of plywood for tap dancing, my little brothers’ toys, and my big brother’s drum set, actually won the 1957 Guinness world record for the “Least Amount of Walking Space in a 15 by 19 Living Room.” (I made that last part up, but you get the idea.)
Feeling crowded
When you open the lid on a tin of sardines, you can turn it upside down without spilling anything except a bit of juice; the little fish can’t fall out because they’re packed so tightly together.
There was a definite safety advantage in riding an overcrowded bus to and from school every day — I can picture it now, that giant yellow tin of sardines driving down the road — because if there were an accident, we’d be held in our beltless seats by the tremendous force of four kids jammed shoulder-to-shoulder in benches designed for two.
Although we boomers love to brag, “back when we were in school, we had 85 kids in each classroom,” the real number was more like 45. Obviously, no room for social distancing there.
The desks were so close together it was impossible not to accidentally see what your neighbor got for an answer on the math test and it was irresistibly easy for the mean kid behind you to poke you when Sister Mary Anne wasn’t looking.
And, when one kid sneezed, the entire class blew their collective noses!
Things had not opened up much space-wise even by the 70s. While working summers during college at Wolf and Dessauer’s department store, I ate lunch at the lunch counter in the store’s basement. Particularly memorable about those lunches: how often I came into physical contact with the person sitting next to me because the stools were so close together; how much I enjoyed the delicious BLTs (the lunch counter’s, not the person’s next to me); and how certain I was that the elevator operator guy sat next to me only so he could steal my French Fries without me noticing — counter space was that limited.
Around that same time, I believe it was the summer of 1975, I went to see the movie Jaws. Cinema seats were so close together back then that the terrified woman sitting next to me, a total stranger, was able to throw her arms around me during the opening sequence in which the girl goes for a midnight swim and . . . well, you know. That sudden, surprising, death-grip embrace scared me more than what was happening on the screen. Such a feat would not have been possible if our seats had been further apart if we had been in today’s widely-spaced, luxuriously large, Dream Loungers.
But back to my car in that Pick ‘n’ Save parking lot. In pondering that notion of “space,” I kept circling back to those old days when I always made space for my guardian angel.
Making space for a guardian angel
Except for when I was on the school bus (where there was no room for an angel next to me so she sat in the driver’s seat — just as well!), I did it all the time, wherever I was, no matter how close the quarters, no matter how small the space.
When did I stop? Why did I stop? I recall now, with great fondness, the feeling of safety, security, and comfort that came with knowing my very own, special, hand-picked-by-God guardian angel was always there, occupying the same space.
Dear Readers, will you join me? I have now resolved to resume that wonderful old ritual of saving space for my guardian angel.
I hope to recapture those feelings of safety, security, and comfort. More importantly, I’ve prayed that God will graciously send me a second guardian angel so that, allowing three feet for each angel, I will always be safely socially distanced from everyone.
May the rest of your summer be filled with lots of sacred space and bountiful BLTs.
Linda E. Kelly is a member of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Madison.