Christine
Flowers
So many of us are parked in front of our television sets these days, more out of necessity than desire.
After hundreds of hours of viewing, of clicking the remote because I’m too lazy to walk the 3 feet and manually change the channel, of enduring another season of “Real Fishwives of Wherever” because I was too clinically depressed to change the channel, I’ve come to this conclusion:
The commercials and PSAs are worse than the plague.
It started slowly, in the earliest days of the pandemic when TV networks would slip in a ten to fifteen second “thank you” to the health care workers, flashing pictures of them in masks and begging us to “Stay Safe and Stay Home” for them.
But then I started seeing tributes to grocery store workers, bus drivers, food delivery folks (those maniacal kids who drive like they’re racing at the Formula One so we can all get our take out sushi on time) and I thought: Hm, this is a bit much.
Yes, I know they’re performing a valuable service and I am profoundly grateful for the way they’ve kept us on the edge of normality. That said, the cloying tones of the tributes are getting to me.
We can excuse and appreciate a little overkill when expressing gratitude to the men and women who – let’s be honest – have no choice but to do the dangerous jobs they’re doing. They need to work, as we all do, and their dedication is admirable and in some cases superhuman.