By: Turkish Delight and Oogly Boogly

By Turkish Delight

This is the tale of an eccentric mind experiencing the effects of the pandemic. It all started a couple months ago when my Dad started watching a Turkish television drama. Keep in mind, he’s not Turkish. Watching television or cinema from other countries is interesting and something people should partake in more, though. 

Here’s the twist — soon after he starts the show, the subtitles stop working. But does that deter him? Not at all. He decides to continue watching, except the subtitles are now in his mind. He makes up what the actresses and actors are saying based solely on their mannerisms and clues from the one episode he watched before the subtitles left. It might make sense if he wanted to learn the Turkish language, but that’s not even the case. 

While most of us lost our understanding of basic human interactions during quarantine, my dad purposely chose to watch shows he didn’t understand in the first place.

This is all to the dismay of my mom who just wants to go to sleep while the voices of Turkish actors boom around the whole house. I’m surprised that he hasn’t been banished to the couch by now, but maybe the Turkish voices mimic socialization, and I know we could all use more of that.

By Oogly Boogly

There’s a running joke in my household that a reality show centres around my family. This isn’t because we’re entertaining, compelling, or because my mother leaked my sex tape for celebrity status because marrying an Olympian and having O.J. Simpson’s child wasn’t enough. This is because we act like a ~quirky~ family sitcom that barely made it past pilot season. In quarantine, this only got worse. 

I could talk about my mother’s off-key singing or my adult brother’s newfound tendency to create board games and scream at them. The true star of the show, though, is my older sister. On day eight, she started hugging my legs. On day 20, she called the cat and me “oogly boogly.” On day 36, she gave me a sticky note that read: “oogly boogly, if you illegally download The Sims for me, I will stop quarantine touching you.” Was this a threat or a promise?

Turns out, the so-called quarantine touching wouldn’t end until day 52: Electric Boogaloo. She entered my room at 3 a.m. and asked me to name every single Chicago Blackhawks player and their jersey number. Each time I failed, she would suffocate me with a pillow until I got it right. 

It was somehow the thing about a group of men I was most afraid of.

That, dear reader, was the night I decided that the world needed to bear witness to these horrible acts. Please donate to my GoFundMe to officially produce the first season of Keeping Up with Yet Another White Family Getting Sick of Each Other and Being Toxic About It During COVID-19.