PANDEMIC

I Want My Hot Girl Summer Back!

The anti-vaxxed more than vex me

We were so close. Now it seems we’re even farther away than we were at the start of this race.

A couple of months ago we were really ready to get our freak on. Well, not quite, but I did dream for a quick second about showing up at my neighborhood watering hole — mask in hand, just in case — and hanging out indoors for a brewski, maybe a burger, and even a banana split for dessert.

Moker and I did venture out — cautiously, at first — when things started looking up. I distinctly remember joining some of the fam for a Mother’s Day feast. After all, what’s sweeter than dining with Dear Old Mom on a day when she doesn’t have to cook, for crying out loud?

We entered the restaurant wearing our adorable face coverings — he’s got a few that are Bucky Badger-themed, and I picked up a sweet set in Hawaii, where local emporiums not only still require masks, but write down your phone number, address and email for contact tracing. And they check, too.

Then June happened, and I found myself on the brink of celebrating what I’d seen online as “Hot Girl Summer”. Or was that “Hot Vax Summer”? “Hot Vaxxed Girl Summer”?

I’d settle for any of the three. Or all at once, if you want to know the truth.

We enjoyed the heck out of the next couple of months. Dined with old friends — inside and unmasked — at (for us, at least) an upscale restaurant. Hung out a couple of times at the place Moker plays golf. Listen, their cheesesteaks actually approach South Philly-style excellence. Next time you’re in my hood, we should go. My treat.

It all seems so long ago, ya know?

What’s happening in places like South Dakota, Florida, my native Texas and elsewhere would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

Several hundred motorcycle aficionados descended on Sturgis, SD, in the biggest super-spreader event hosted in that state since, well, the same rally this time last year.

Dummy Governor Ron “Don’t Tread on Me” DeSantis is campaigning for re-election off his opposition to lifesaving public health measures. Thinks he’ll get re-elected by killing people. Governor Dum-Dum’s online site is selling — no, really, they are — T-Shirts and other paraphernalia branded with an idiotic but iconic slogan: “Don’t Fauci My Florida”. Lovely, huh?

Austin has been so overrun by Governor Greg “I’m a Jackass” Abbott’s COVID denial that earlier this week the capital of the Lone Star State had an ICU capacity of six — that would be the number just past five beds, and right before seven — count ’em, for an entire city with a population of close to one million.

And don’t forget Alabama. Remember that Georgia congressperson with the crossfit mania, the Kreepy Karen with the badly bleached bob? Welp, she visited the “Heart of Dixie” (yeah, they’re ’Bama Proud of this pedigree) and got a COVID-denier crowd so riled up they cheered the state’s abysmal vaccination rate, which is the lowest in the country. Roll, Tide!

Millionaires taught us last month that “re-entry” can be smooth.

My bestie, Jeff Bezos and his phallic spacecraft should speak for themselves, cause they sure ain’t speaking for the rest of us.

I’m not having a great time getting back to normal, because no one who’s in charge will define what normal is these days

My entire family is “fully vaxxed”, as they say.

Moker and I got the jabs six months ago. What’s up with all these other weirdos?

I taught in a public school for more than two decades. Students can’t cross the threshold of any such institution without the proper shots. Believe me. They check for this stuff, and I’ve seen kids perp-walked out to the parking lot and told not to come back til their medical charts are current.

I was blessed with two babies, who each received all their required vaccinations in infancy, boosters included. When they entered middle school they each were jabbed with the then-newish HPV vaccine. And before they left the nest for college, each girl got her meningitis inoculation— to ward off a bacterial infection just as contagious and just as scary as the virus that has claimed 615,000 American lives — and counting.

So save me the bleating about “my body” and your “rights”. You’re not sheep. Or are you?

You have no “right” to continue to spread the delta variant with abandon. Nor to continue to kill more than 500 Americans per day. Or keep me from my family, my routine, my life just because you won’t take this worldwide pandemic seriously.

Stop employing the lingo of the reproductive rights movement to justify your ignorance. Get the damn shot, and quit your complaining. Stupid is as stupid does, you know.

I’m with the corporations — Google, Disney and United Airlines, for starters — who insist all employees get vaxxed.

No jab, no job. That’s the way to go. And I can’t wait for airlines to demand proof of the vaccine before travelers fly.

And Bravo! to the small businesses around the country, like bars and restaurants, who refuse to serve the great unvaccinated. “No shoes, No shirt, No shot, No service” for the COVID-denier crowd, if you ask me. If forced, I pray those turkeys prefer to be shot rather than plucked. From the social scene, that is.

I think if Corporate America drops the hammer on these kooks, they’ll have no option other than to comply.

And they’ll do so “Faster than a one-legged man at a butt-kickin’ contest”, as my Nana would say.

It’s like the double yellow stripe down the middle of a public thoroughfare.

We all understand that if you cross the line, someone could die. You need to stay in your lane, y’all.

Get vaxxed — save lives, and put me back on the road to my dang Hot Girl Summer.