The first thing to understand is that nobody dies from CV-19. Nobody dies from cancer or diabetes or having a piano fall on our heads, either. We die from something putting such a substantial burden on our hearts that they stop beating, so essentially 100% of us die “from” cardiac arrest. 
 
Still, there is always something that puts the strain on our hearts, whether it is cancer or diabetes or having CV-19 taking over our lungs. In many cases, CV-19 tips the scales fatally for someone who is already battling the effects of some other malady. And when that happens, people have a disturbing habit of blaming the victims for their own mortality. 
 
“Well, she was only 37, but she had asthma, so that’s really what killed her.”
 
“After three years of dialysis, the virus was just the final nail. By that time, I suspect he really wanted to die.”
 
“If only he’d become a vegan, he never would have gotten cancer in the first place. If you think about it, he essentially committed suicide.”
 
“Remember how she kept saying it was all a hoax? Hah! Karma’s a bitch, baby.”
 
Yes, of course, it’s a TRUE FACT!!! All of these people were asking for it and they were ultimately happy to decrease the surplus population. Coronavirus is the real victim here, falsely blamed for killing nearly a million people who wanted/deserved to die. Kinda makes you want to take the virus into your home and give it a warm snuggle and…never mind.
 
It’s a deflection, of course. Whenever something goes wrong and we cannot control or prevent it, we try to find a reason that it only happens to other people. Even if we have some underlying condition—a status that applies to about 80% of people over the age of 55 and a disturbingly large percentage of people under that age—we try to convince ourselves that THEY were much more vulnerable than WE are.
 
That kind of deflection makes it very easy to be nonchalant about THEIR deaths, especially since most of us don’t know a person who has died from the disease. Yet.  On average, if each of us was going to know one person who died of the virus at this point, we would need to have a social circle of about 2,000 people. 
 
We’re more likely to know someone who contracted the disease and recovered, of course, but that reinforces our tendency to ascribe blame to the people who succumb. The people who survived were strong, maybe blessed, much as we are, while the people who died were weaker, less deserving, even a bit guilty.
 
Denial is a useful coping mechanism in times like these, but it does have its limits. When we start blaming the victims of a pandemic, we just might have gone over the line.
 
We never went to med school, so this review of medicine and psychology might sound just a bit too simple, but that's okay. We like to keep things as simple as possible, which is why it's so easy to subscribe by just clicking here. 
 
 
 
 
 

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After couple of months of tipping people 50% to deliver my pizza and toilet paper, I’m reconsidering the entire concept of tipping. Why am I tipping some service providers but not others, and when did a lagniappe become a requirement? For example:

1. Why am I expected to give a tip to the person who hands me my coffee at Starbucks, but not the person who hands me my coffee at McDonald’s? Seriously hoping I didn’t open a can of worms with this question.
   
   
2. If tipping is a reward for good service, shouldn’t I be tipping the person as an incentive before I get served? Afterwards, it’s too late to make a difference, right?
   
   
3. Sometimes, I get really bad service and I still leave a tip, because I know the server is so bad she won’t make enough money to pay her rent. Does this make me a philanthropist or a schmuck?
   
   
4. The server comes to our table about 20 times to take and deliver our orders, refill the water, and convince us to order desserts we don’t need. She earns about $3 for her efforts until I decide if I’m going to leave a tip or not. This is clearly a job for daredevils.
   
   
5. By what percentage do you reduce a tip when:
   
   *  The cab driver is on the phone, speaking in a foreign language, while looking at you in the rear-view mirror and smirking?
   
   *  You have to get up and walk over to the coffee machine for a refill?
   
   *  They give you the wrong entrée and then it takes five minutes before you can flag someone down?
   
   *  You have to wait 25 minutes for your luggage at the hotel?
   
   
6. Servers who work for tips are absorbing some of the risk for restaurant owners, because they get paid very little when the place is empty. Since they’re taking an “ownership risk,” shouldn’t they get a share of the profits when the place is busy?
   
   
7. When you give money to a panhandler, is that a tip for their “service” of making you feel better about yourself? And if so, shouldn’t it be a deductible medical therapy expense?
   
   
8. In some Chicago restaurants, the bill includes a 3% surcharge for employee health care. Am I supposed to be happy to see that the owner is paying anything at all, or should I be ticked that he wants me to pitch in as well? 

Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that nobody in a position of authority chooses to work for tips. Maybe there’s a lesson here, if only I could figure out the hidden meaning.
 
 
Subscribing to Dad Writes is almost like giving me a tip, except it doesn’t cost you anything and you don’t even need to enjoy the experience in order to do it. Just click here to sign up and I will feel fully compensated.

 
 

 Looking back on it, all my time in isolation has had its upsides, including a bunch of life hacks and new games that can pay big dividends in any future pandemic, snowstorm or hangover. Just in case we end up with a second wave in the fall, or sooner, you’ll want to bookmark this list of new pastimes I discovered while in the hole…

1. Child torture: Make small donations to obscure and questionable charities in honor of your adult children. When they receive the acknowledgement and ask you about it, tell them you’ve changed your will and now all your money is going to the left-handed, eleven-toed Nigerian mining engineers’ retirement fund.
2.  Rescue mission: Isn’t it time that you finally disassemble your dryer and find out where all those unmatched socks have been hiding? Hint: They’re usually inside the motor housing.
3. Spice inventory: Try to remember why you bought eight jars of parsley as you dig through the hundreds of spices in your kitchen cabinet. Instead of organizing them alphabetically, try ranking them by anti-oxidant strength. 
4. Scavenger hunt: Open up the junk drawer in your kitchen and grab all the weird plastic pieces and tiny screws that fell off your appliances over the past ten years. Now, set the oven timer, if you can figure out how, and try to find where they fit, assuming you still have the appliances.
5. Face mask fabrication: Anyone can make a face mask from a handkerchief or a kippah. Join the big leagues by creating unique PPE supplies from those blue jeans you were hoping to fit into some day. Bonus: Tell your friends the jeans were actually loose on you, so you sacrificed them for the greater good.
6. Artisanal crafts: While everyone else focuses on sourdough bread and lutefisk recipes, revive the ancient art of making rubber band balls and chains of paper clips.
7. Improve your view: Bite the bullet and get rid of all your skinny clothes that…let’s face it…you are never going to wear again and all the souvenir coffee mugs that you never use and the pens that don’t have any usable ink anymore and…voila…your home will be so much lighter that it will rise off its foundation and you can see over the trees.
8. Make $Millions on eBay: Self-quarantine is the perfect time to finally assure a comfortable retirement by selling all those Beanie Babies, baseball cards, coins, stamps, Pogs and every other “collectible” that you just knew “will be worth something someday.”

 
Normally, we’d say, “don’t try these tricks at home,” but not this time. Of course, it’s a good idea to make sure your homeowner’s insurance is up to date, just to be safe.
 
 
Last year on Fathers Day, we chronicled the missed opportunities among unengaged dads. Next week, we look at a different kind of role model. What kind? Just click here to subscribe and you’ll be the first to know.

In the spring, an old man’s fancy turns to leaving the damned house and complaining about the heat and humidity. And bugs. Now that the nation is reopening, it’s time to review what’s out there and what’s ahead, from the only source you can trust 137% on 73% of the issues.

1. We only get to do this once, so nobody really knows what would have happened if we didn’t have the closings and the isolation. It's absolutely indisputable that less contact translates into less infections,  but the precise impact from reduced contact is a mystery for eternity. Most of my friends insist they know, and they have You Tube videos to prove it, but they’re kidding themselves. We do not know because we cannot know. It’s that simple.
   
   
2. Looking ahead, warm weather might slow the spread of the virus, or not, while re-openings could be leading to a new wave, or not. We do not know, and we cannot know, until whatever happens happens. It’s that simple.
   
   
3. I’ve come to the unalterable conclusion that we need more citizens and fewer partisans in the United States. Somebody, everybody, should be on the side of the entire nation, not just the people who share our political views.
   
   
4. I’m venturing out more as the weather improves and, yes, I’m wearing a mask, because it’s the right thing to do in a civilized society. Every so often, you gotta do something for the greater good and, really, nobody wants to look at my face anyway. 
   
   
5. When the pandemic wanes, what will the grandkids think about hugging? Will they miss it so much they’ll want to do it all the time, or will they be so used to the distancing that they won’t feel the need any more?
   
   
6. The most boring part about meeting people at a restaurant is the 30-minute recap of everyone’s commute. Now that we’re meeting online, we spend the first 30 minutes of every call recapping the challenges of logging onto Zoom. I never thought I would miss traffic, but here we are.
   
   
7. Not everything is political, in spite of what we read online. If you were visiting a dying relative, would you spend your last hours together in a debate about politics? If so, maybe you should skip that visit.
   
   
8. Right now, my most time-consuming task is unsubscribing from all the sites that invite me to three webcasts per day, plus a couple dozen surveys about how they are serving my needs. Seriously, I’m getting two or three invitations a day from some of these guys and I can’t help but wonder how they think this is going to make me like them more.

 
Of course, we only invite you to subscribe to Dad Writes once per week, and only after you’ve taken the time to read our latest whining. Certainly, you should reward our restraint by clicking here to subscribe, right now!!
 

 So I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and I have decided, with only minor regret, that I will not be sacrificing myself in order to reopen the economy. It’s been a tough decision to make, especially when I consider the indisputable arguments in favor of my death from the virus.
 
My friends on the internet have explained it to me in detail, of course. I am old, past my prime, in that age group where I’m gonna die from something or other, and what do I have to live for anyway? It's my patriotic duty, they say, to dive into the mosh pit and let the chips fall, well, on me.
 
From an economic standpoint, they explain, I am absolutely “unproductive,” and therefore expendable. Yes, I worked diligently and produced income and jobs over 40 years, raising good kids, consuming goods, and hoisting Old Glory on every national holiday. But that was then and now is now and what the heck have I done for you lately, America?
 
Nothing, that’s what. Yeah, I mentor startups and give to charity and provide support to people who need it and, once in a while, I even remember to floss. Mostly, though, I’m a leech who sucks on the teat of retirement savings. Worse, I’m getting dangerously close to signing up for the welfare scam known as Social Security. Sure, the government forced me to pay into the system, but they never intended to actually pay the money back. The only way to keep Social Security solvent is for people like me to just croak a few decades early. Problem. Solved.
 
My internet friends challenge me daily. Don't I want my children and grandchildren to live in a nation with a thriving economy? Yes, yes I do. I want them to be able to go to fancy restaurants and movie theaters whenever they want. Of course, I know they won't want to do any of that, preferring to sit on the couch while they stream their movies enjoy pizza delivery. Still, I want them to have the choice to do or do not.
 
Still, from a completely selfish perspective, I should make the sacrifice in order to be a hero to all the people who are demanding that I shuffle off in order to create jobs. I know that these people, who are just too busy and productive to volunteer to sacrifice themselves, will thank me for my service and honor my memory in much the same way they have honored the other 100,000 people who preceded me. (Fun fact: When I started fiddling with this post, the number was 50,000. How time flies.)
 
So, as I said, I’ve given this whole thing a lot of thought, but then it occurred to me that this isn’t a zero-sum game. If I get infected and croak, that doesn’t magically prevent it from happening to someone else. In fact, I am likely to spread the virus to several someones on my way out. Even worse, I might take out one of those productive members of society that we need to protect.
 
Worst of all, though, I have it on good authority that this whole pandemic didn’t come from China at all.  CV-19 was cooked up in a Denver warehouse where airlines once made food to serve on planes and now produce…nothing. Turns out the whole disease is a plot to keep us from using our frequent flier miles. (You can tell this is true because you just read it on the internet.)
 
Damn you, United, you almost had me. You can get my miles back when you pry them from my cold, dead account. And that, as I said, is going to be later than you hoped.
 
Meanwhile, there are a couple of slices of cold pizza calling to me from the refrigerator. Who says I have nothing to live for????
 
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Now that pretty much every state is reopening in some way, it’s time for a refresher course on why we should all be dead already. Just in case you were excited about finally getting out of the house…
 

1. Did you ever notice that the guy who clears the tables at the restaurant uses the same rag to wipe both the seat cushions and the table top? Did you also notice that he also holds your cup by the rim when he refills your coffee? No, you never noticed that? Now you will.
2. Speaking of which, did you ever notice that women will put their purse on the floor, then rest it on the napkin on their lap, and then wipe their mouths with their napkins? Nope? Now you will.
3. At the doughnut shop, they avoid touching your doughnut by picking it up with a piece of waxed paper, but then they throw the waxed paper into the bag with your donuts. Isn’t that just an inefficient process for infections?
4. When buffets come back, we’ll all be admonished to use tongs in order to avoid touching the food with our hands. But then we all end up holding the same tongs, so what’s the point?
5. When gyms reopen, people will spritz every surface they touch, or breathe on, but nobody spritzes the door handle that everyone grabs when they leave. Speaking of which, nobody spritzes the handle of the spritzer bottle, either.
6. It doesn’t matter how much hand sanitizer you use, I don’t want to shake hands in a restaurant. Look, I wouldn’t kiss the palm of the guy I’m having lunch with, so why would I shake hands with him before picking up my sandwich?
7. Nothing gives me more faith in the cleanliness of hospitals than sitting on the bus next to a guy in scrubs. Of course, now I won’t be sitting next to him, but the ick factor is the same.  
8. When the next pandemic arrives, it won’t come from China. We’ll get it from sharing the pancake syrup dispenser at the local diner.

 
And don’t get me started on the people who let their dogs lick their hands and faces and then say, “Their mouths are cleaner than ours.” First, it’s not true and, second, even if it was, did you see what they were licking before they licked you? Stop it. Now.
 
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