by Barry Berman

I panicked.

A sign flashed on my TV from Netflix yesterday that it was having a problem with my payment. For the next 20 minutes, I struggled, desperately, pressing remote buttons and trying to get through on the phone.

I mean really, Netflix is one of our comfort toys these days. It’s an escape from the constant drone of CNN, the new Covid-19 cases and death tolls and the videos of crowded beaches as the mindboggling, tone-deaf masses risk their lives for a few rays of sun.

We need our Unorthodox, Schitts Creek, Grace and Frankie, The Crown to get us through. I’m even watching the silent preview page that just scrolls photos of video titles.

All this made me think about how life has changed.

Now, that may sound ridiculous. Of course, our lives are in upheaval. We’re locked in our homes. We’re seeing no one. We’re scared out of our minds. Food shopping is like an episode of Survivor.

But that’s our steady state.

Sometimes it takes a stupid incident like a billing issue with Netflix or finding an ant on a computer screen to push you to a new place of realization and the subsequent horror that you don’t know when or how this will all end and you assess the status quo. And it’s not pretty.

We basically spend our entire waking hours — except for an hour a day when the Corona gods say we can go out for a run — at one table, in one room in our rental bungalow. We sit an estimated 8 hours at that table where we eat, work face-to-face, watch TV, speak (occasionally). We’re not complaining (too much), for we know we have it pretty good.

For those who know me, you’ll recall that I can’t sit in one place for two minutes. I need to pace, feign going to the bathroom, get some water (then go the bathroom again). In my work life, I had props — an easel to write on and a whole bunch of squeezable stress toys and people to pop in on.

Here, I pace but usually toward a couch 6 feet to my right or the front door 7 feet straight ahead or the kitchen area a few feet away.

I would guess that no matter what the size of one’s abode, it must seem like a prison cell by now. My brother Mark and Isabel, for instance, are in a tiny New York studio, with all the stuff you can cram into one room plus a piano. As the old comedian, Henny Youngman would say, not enough room to change your mind. But I’m also sure that people in much bigger homes or conversely smaller spaces, really the size of prison cells are feeling the pinch of cabin fever. (What an apt definition from Google (“irritability, listlessness, and similar symptoms resulting from long confinement or isolation indoors.”)

Living space becomes a metaphor: small things become big things.

The perforation on the Stop & Shop brand paper towels are too wide apart and we’re running out. My God, our salad spinner broke, what are we going to do? The line spacing of Peggy’s computer display became out of whack and she uttered, “I just want it to be normal.”

I’m even getting irritated hearing the phrase, “New normal.”

Maybe we focus on the small things as a subliminal, self-preservation device, as focusing on the big things are so horrific, they are unbearable. As with time being distorted, our sensibilities are being tried and shifting even more so. Not necessarily for the worse; it’s just different.

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Enjoy
My Little Town by Simon and Garfunkel

Barry Berman was founder of CRN International and Connecticut Radio Network. He is an entrepreneur, writer and broadcaster and is starting, Sounds Great! Media a boutique digital audio (podcasting) agency and consultancy with an emphasis on health and wellness.