Wishing January had a snooze alarm

I guess it’s still a thing. I got a call last week from a friend in Santa Fe who said that after all this time of avoiding it, she had come down with a real nasty bout of COVID-19. Although it’s not progressed to the intubation point, she concedes it’s bad enough with the fatigue and the coughing and what-all.

As a matter of fact, the state’s Department of Health reports that there’s a slight uptick in cases.

It’s been a good five years since we started talking about that new-normal craziness of sanitizers and the stocking up on Ramen and TP. Not to mention the elbow bumps, no face touching, the handwashing, and the six-foot rule. And why six feet? Isn’t that how deep they bury you? Was that a clue?

It got to the point where I didn’t want to rub my eyes when I woke up in the morning without first sanitizing my hands. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but still …

I honestly haven’t given much thought to it for something like two years, outside of being reminded to get the latest vaccine, but this week I’m looking around to see if I had any of those store-bought masks left stashed away.

Frankly, Doordash might start coming in handy.

That said, we’re right in the middle of the so-called cold and flu season, but if you watch commercials on TV, the cold and flu season seems to be all year, except for the allergy season. If you’re like me, you’ve no doubt contracted a bad cold X-number times over your lifetime, so it’s no wonder it’s called the common cold.

Unless you’re one of the lucky few with an immune system like your favorite Marvel superhero, you know what I’m talking about. Last weekend – and, of course, blame it on the fickleness of the weather – I found myself flat-out covered up in bed, drinking lots of liquids and being decidedly undignified. It’s no fun, but after all these years I’ve been on this planet, it’s something I can just about set my watch to: the coughing, the ah-chooing, the spinning head, and the achy bones.

Even achy teeth, like they’re moving around. What’s with that?

Teeth are supposed to behave.

But this time around, I’m worrying more about it because I have yet another dental appointment coming up, and I can just see myself lying there with my mouth wide open and suddenly having to cough up a loogie or blow my nose in the middle of a root canal or something.

In the meantime, I’ve been taking Linus Pauling’s recommendation and OD-ing on Airborne fizzy tablets and vitamin C capsules—anything to keep me from humiliating myself in the dentist’s chair.

Enough of that.

If you haven’t heard, this month heralds the beginning of Generation Beta, which is anyone born between now and 2039. They come on the heels of Generation Alpha, who were born to Millennials and Gen Z’ers between 2010 and 2024.

This is how it works. The Z Generation was preceded by Millennials, who are now having those Gen Beta babies. Millennial was preceded by Generation Y, which was preceded by Generation X. Generation X followed the Baby Boomers, which followed what they called in the sixties the Silent Majority (they were the ones who grew up during the Great Depression). And the newest one I’ve heard is the G.I. Generation, the ones who live and fought during World War II. That’s as far as the list goes - back to the turn of the previous century - so I guess the generation before 1900 were just called “people.”

I’m reminded of my grandfather, who was born in that labelless generation. I guess you could call it the “Whatever Has To Get Done” generation. I mean, he was a carpenter, a cotton farmer, a mechanic, and a blacksmith. Come to think of it, you could call him a Millennial, too, albeit a 100-years-ago version. Statisticians say Gen Beta will make up roughly 16 percent of the world’s population by 2035.

If you think about it, Gen Beta will grow up in an entirely new world with AI and whatever comes after that, but as far as I’m concerned, you new parents need not fret because, as with every generation, people learn to adapt to a whole batch of new-normals. Like me, when I had to learn skills my parents didn’t have, such as how to wind up a cassette tape with a pencil eraser.

But I digress.

As these are the weirdest times I’ve ever seen, I’m thinking of Benjamin Franklin, who was born 319 years ago tomorrow. “I hope,” he once wrote. “That all mankind will at length…have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats.”