Ross: What will we tell future generations about this outbreak?
Mar 20, 2020, 8:10 AM
(Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press via AP)
Like a lot of media people during this outbreak, I’ve been working away from the studio this week, broadcasting from my daughter’s office in West Virginia.
She has 34 pictures of her daughter – my granddaughter – displayed on the corkboard above the desk.
It got me to thinking: I remember hearing my parents and grandparents talking about what they lived through – world wars, the Depression – all that “Greatest Generation” stuff. They remembered the soup kitchens, scrap metal drives, and the country pulling together.
Those 34 snapshots are telling me that someday, that little kid is going to look at me and say Grandpa what was it like during the Great Pandemic of 2020?
I want to be able to tell her in my grandpa voice: People were scared at first, and for a while you couldn’t even find toilet paper, and we blamed it all on China.
But then we calmed down, and we started helping each other; we found ways to work without driving – which actually made the air cleaner – we found that even with everything closed you could still go for a walk on a sunny day, and still get take-out, and we didn’t complain if they were out of “Extra Crispy,” we were fine with “Original Recipe.”
Then even after the scientists fixed everything, we learned that you should save when times are good because you never know when times will be bad.
So that’s my advice on how to get through this outbreak: Live the story you want to be able to tell your grandkids.
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