The Year in Review
One of the last photos taken of me in 2020.
Well, it’s over.
Allegedly. Even though we’ve been in 2021 for a few days now I still have a sneaking suspicion that 2020 is going to pop out of the closet tomorrow holding a leather belt and wearing a pair of clown shoes. “GOTCHA!” it’ll scream. “GET READY BOYS, I’M BACK FOR ROUND TWO!” Then it’ll crack the belt, grin wickedly, and advance slowly, one step at a time…
Ah...hopefully not. If I were to presume that 2020 is indeed in our collective rearview mirror then I suppose it’s safe to reflect on, though I did have a bit of a writerly crisis when I was trying to decide how to approach my “Year in Review” blog. Should I get it over with as fast as possible, to consign 2020 to the garbage dump of history so we can forget it and move on without any further pain? Or should I let 2020 marinate in my thoughts for a while, in an attempt to find some sort of brilliant insight or valuable wisdom in its endless madness? After meditating on this dilemma, I’ve chosen to do neither and instead travel through the lost highways, wrong turns, and dead ends of 2020 month by month, with one Pandemic Lesson from each. If it all makes sense, great. If it doesn’t...well, chalk it up to the general confusion that pervaded the last 365 days, call it a wash, and live on to fight the big scary monsters of life another day.
January was an extremely average month which only appears noteworthy in hindsight because of how much of life we took for granted. For example, if I had known that my intramural basketball season would be canceled because of a global disease outbreak, I’m not sure I would have been so eager to make the playoffs. We were probably going to lose in the first round anyway, but hey, upsets happen. I also remember seeing 1917 in theaters. A movie! In theaters! The only one I’d see in 2020, as it turned out, though I’d argue we lived through a movie all year. Yeah bro, Contagion. Ha ha. Pandemic Lesson from January, #1 of 2020: Movie theater popcorn is something to never take for granted.
February is an indistinct gray blur in my memories. Not just because of the time that has passed, but because February is always a blur. Why the fuck is it only 28 days? Why don’t we have 11 months of 30 days each and then one month (pick one. July, preferably, because then summer would be longer) of 35? Right. All this calendar nonsense reminds me of the Phantom Time Hypothesis (which is true). In the early 600s, the kings of Europe and the Pope conspired to speed-warp the global calendar, jumping to the years of the late 990s, to place them at the historically significant year of 1000. Obviously, this is true, since there is almost no recorded history of the skipped years, and because I say so. Anyway, February. Pandemic Lesson #2: Pope Sylvester II knew exactly what he was doing.
March, of course, was when everything went haywire. The world flipped, the oceans flooded the cities, Yellowstone erupted, the moon exploded, I had Rice Krispies for seven meals in a row—what’s that? The moon didn’t explode? Oh. I must have been confusing my Twitter news feed with the recurring nightmares I was having over and over again. What I really remember from March was trying to figure out how to mute myself on Zoom so no one could hear me as I casually played CoolMath games in another window. For those of you with a childhood, Papa’s Pizzeria and Bloxorz are still on there for anyone to play. Pandemic Lesson from March, #3 overall: The mute button on Zoom is the most powerful technological tool since the invention of fire.
April. Who the fuck remembers April? Not I, captain. Stuck at home, caught in a bewildering tide of history while doing almost nothing. Amongst other things, I can almost guarantee I probably consumed food and drank water periodically. Someone famous died, probably. In April it seemed like there were a lot of empty hours to fill (like when Pope Sylvester II filled 297 years of history by making them not happen). I just checked my camera roll to see if any pictures from April would spark my memory as to what I did then, but the first picture I saw was the Avengers bowing to Big Chungus in a hallway. Seems fitting. April? April. Say the word April in your head a million times in a row. Pandemic Lesson from April, #4 of 2020: April doesn’t exist.
April.
In terms of 2020 altogether, May was probably one of the better months. My life wasn’t that hard, the sun was shining, the leaves were green again, and I finished Nixonland by Rick Perlstein, which offered up one of my favorite Richard Nixon quotes, which he uttered in 1968: “I can eat in ten minutes. Why waste an hour or two eating?” Wise words, Mr. President. In May, I guess May Day happened (on the 1st), and so did International Museum Day (the 18th), but these were relatively minor events and I only celebrated each of them by getting hammered for a week straight. International Firefighters Day was a different story. You just wait until it comes around again this year. May’s Pandemic Lesson, #5 overall: Every day’s a holiday, baby.
June offered a few memorable experiences. I got a call from my old mentor Dr. Gonzo at two a.m., who sounded drunk but claimed he was with “Nicolas Cage.” Another drunken voice came on the line and told me to steal the Declaration of Independence. Scared, I hung up. I also was working at Mahoney, where I learned the secret of where they keep the ice rink during the summer. No, I won’t tell you where, except I will tell you that they pick up the whole rink and transport it to a secure location, where they keep the ice frozen year round. Really? No. June passed like time usually does (except the years 614-911, which passed instantaneously when the Pope snapped his fingers). Pandemic Lesson #6: When ice rinks close for the season, they just let the ice melt.
July, of course, was like any other month, except it was July, so it was completely different from all the other months. I do remember that bizarre phase on Twitter when everything was made out of cake. I was walking around paranoid, worried that every chair I sat down in was going to collapse beneath me, revealing pink frosting stuck to the back of my pants. I also did specifically not go to Burger King. I didn’t go to other places either, but I really didn’t go to Burger King. In other words, even in a normal year I wouldn’t have gone to Burger King. Then I moved into a new house with three roommates, a house we call the Randolph Palace because four kings live there. It also has a moat, a drawbridge, and a locked tower that we don’t know how to open. July’s Pandemic Lesson, #7 overall: The Burger King does not live in the Randolph Palace.
I have mixed feelings about August, just as I have mixed feelings about the phrase “soft drink.” What, exactly, about Pepsi or Sprite or Best Choice Grape Soda makes them “soft”? I could easily google this, but I prefer to remain ignorant and instead just speculate wildly. My own theory is that they’re called soft drinks because “caffeinated barbecue water” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Put simply, August was great because it was still summer and then August wasn’t as great because school started. Can we change the seasons to mirror the school schedule? I don’t care how warm it is, if I’m doing homework it is no longer summer. Apparently I have more gripes with our current calendar system than I realized and they’re all coming out today. Pandemic Lesson #8: There should be either ten seasons (winter, St. Patrick’s day, spring, rainy, pre-summer, summer, school, autumn, fall, Christmas) or just one big one (the whole year).
September is the best month, of course. After all, I wouldn’t have been born in it if it wasn’t. If everyone could choose their birthday it would be in September. Admit it, April-birthday-having people. Just say the word April in your head another million times and then you’ll appreciate how weird it is. Anyway, 2020’s September saw me turn 38, which in Phantom Time years is like ancient. Other than that I don’t remember a whole lot besides paying several hundred dollars for a campus parking pass to park there for exactly three hours a week. I’m assuming I did homework and wrote essays, though the particulars of these alleged assignments escapes me. September was scattered, as it always tends to be for me one way or another. In related news, I don’t know what I had for breakfast today. Pandemic Lesson #9: If anybody asks, I still look 30, right? Right? What’s that about my hairline? I see.
October means Halloween! Monsters! Trick or treat! Jumbo-sized Kit Kats eaten three at a time! Well...for me, at least. Remember when we were kids and all the PTA Committee members would park their Toyota Highlanders and Chevy Suburbans in the school parking lot for Trunk or Treat? No? October 2020 wasn’t bad, or at least I have no specifically bad negative recollections about it. That’s a win in my book. Good job, October. You’d probably make the podium in the Month Olympics, except October is the tenth month. Another calendar complaint, though this time Pope Sylvester II isn’t at fault, since he didn’t name the months, just skipped several thousand of them. Instead I’ll blame it on the Romans for naming all the earlier months after their gods. Thanks, Romans. What did I do in October last year? No idea. If you know, text me. Or don’t. Pandemic Lesson #10: Time goes fast when you’re eating 50 Kit Kats a day.
Ah, November. The runner-up month. Sort of like getting second place in the school spelling bee. It’s like—what’s the point? Who’s going to remember you spelled “trichotillomania” correctly when you got “myrmecophilous” wrong? November is always something I look forward to, because Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday. Somehow, it’s not only legal but encouraged for me to stuff my face and then sit on a couch for twelve hours. Oh, yeah, and the school semester ended, seemingly before it even began. Did I actually have finals? Probably. At some point I recorded myself talking for fifteen minutes about the “gifted learner problem” facing American education for a class project. Watching the video back was like an out-of-body experience. November’s Pandemic Lesson, #11 in our list: The face you see in the mirror is the reverse image of the face everyone else knows you have. You don’t actually know what you look like.
December limped us to the finish line of a very broken year. My December was pretty uneventful, as without school I could focus on applying to grad schools and other projects. As the hours of sunlight got shorter, I began taking long late-afternoon walks around my neighborhood. I’d get all bundled up in a coat, then just wander for as long as I needed to parcel my mixed emotions about the year, staring at the fading light and leafless trees. Then I’d get back to the Palace and eat five quesadillas for dinner, because I earned it. Christmas caught me by surprise—without the usual month-long frenzy of consumerism that precedes it, the day itself didn’t have its usual magic, and then the last week of the year came and went before I really knew what was happening. New Year’s was uneventful. I went to bed at 12:05 a.m. on January 1st, 2021, and slept soundly. Our last Pandemic Lesson, #12: Look around. Go for a walk. Smell the roses. There’s a world out there.
And here we are now, already forging ahead into a whole host of new challenges. But 2020’s lessons will stick with us, and I know I learned a lot just by living through it. In all seriousness, some things were tough. I missed my grandma. I missed playing pickup basketball. I missed a lot of the activities and events I took for granted, and didn’t realize how much they meant to me until they were gone. Our world was shaken and we’re living in unprecedented times. But I made it through healthy and whole and that’s all I can really ask for. I want to thank my girlfriend, my friends, my family, my loyal readers, and yes, even Dr. Gonzo, for helping me through what was undoubtedly the most interesting and chaotic year of my life so far. I hope that 2021 brings you all prosperity, peace, and health.
When the history books are written, there’s no way they’re skipping 2020. Not even you, Pope Sylvester II, can avoid its demented pull. That’s a lesson we can all learn from.
