I don’t pretend to understand the science of pandemics. I barely understand the science of bread. But I lived through the Great Sanitizer Years, and I saw what became of us afterward, when the masks came off and the tempers stayed on. It was a curious time. People spent two years washing their hands vigorously. When the danger finally passed, they looked around for someone to blame for the inconvenience of having chapped hands and overly dry skin. 

     Our leaders, those poor souls, had once been praised for telling us to stay indoors. Later they were scolded for not letting us out sooner. Then they were scolded for letting us out at all. A man could have said “Good morning” and been accused of tyranny, negligence, or both. I recall one fellow, a county supervisor of no particular importance, who had spent the pandemic giving daily updates from his tweet bird account. Afterward, people demanded he resign for “speaking too confidently about case numbers.” He tried to defend himself, but confidence is a capital crime when its post crisis.

    The strangest part was how quickly people turned on one another. During the pandemic, neighbors had left soup on each other’s doorsteps. Afterward, they left strongly worded notes. A woman on my street accused her mailman of “remembering the pandemic incorrectly,” which is a serious charge these days.  

    The grocery store was the worst. People argued over who had worn masks too long, who had worn them too little, and who had worn them in a way that suggested moral weakness, or maybe loose ear bands, which was its own evidence of not taking the situation seriously. One man insisted the produce section had been “a battlefield of personal liberties,” though the only casualty I ever saw was a bruised cantaloupe.

     As for me, I tried to stay out of it. I am a simple observer, and I have learned that the safest place during a public quarrel is behind a large tree. But even I was dragged into the fray when a neighbor accused me of “not having strong enough opinions about the pandemic.” I told him my opinions were perfectly strong, I simply kept them indoors, where they couldn’t bother anyone.

     In the end, the post COVID era taught me one thing: people can endure great hardship, but they cannot endure the idea that someone else endured it incorrectly. And once the danger passes, they will turn on their leaders the way a man turns on a hat that no longer fits, with no memory of why he bought it in the first place. Either way, I still keep my sanitizer handy.