Exclusive interview from the front.
Not actually locked out, per se, as of this moment citizens of These United States of America are still theoretically allowed passage home but who knows what tomorrow will bring? Who knows how much crazier the civilized world can get by the hour?
Minute even?
I’ve been to a handful of rough places where the situation turned sour quickly. Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Palm Springs, and it was easier to sort through fake airlines, byzantine bureaucracies, exploding bombs and radical Islam/The White Party than people are talking about getting out of Western Europe. France and Germany.
Germany.
It’s crazy.
“Is it crazy?” I ask my young daughter as we stroll through the Berlin Zoo, for certain the best zoo in the entire world. I snatched her, for days ago, as paranoia just started creeping. Dusting off my war reporter bona fides, smelling opportunity, getting into the muck because the muck is glorious and my young daughter needs that singular fun.
She’s laughing hysterically at a monkey’s butt and doesn’t hear the first time I ask so I repeat.
“Is it crazy?”
“Mmmm. I think people are crazy and I don’t really care about it.”
“Why are people crazy?”
“Because they’re nerds.”
“Do you know what Coronavirus is?”
“Yeah.”
“What.”
“A sickness?”
“Are you scared about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because other people are nerds and only old people get sick.”
“Do you think it’s fun to be in Europe during the Coronavirus Zombie Apocalypse?”
She pauses for a long minute while the monkey takes its butt and leaves.
“I think it’s fun but also dumb because we don’t even have the Coronavirus.”
“Well the actor in Big has the Coronavirus. Did you know that?”
“Good. Big was a horrible movie.”
As always, she’s right.
More as the story develops.
