By: Dev Petrovic, Staff Writer
- Things have just progressively gotten worse
One day, it’s just another day in a pandemic where I’m questioning how many Goldfish crackers I’ve eaten in the past week. Next, an ugly dictator is staging a violent coup. What happens tomorrow? A TikTok trend where teenagers get high on nutmeg? An army of disillusioned right-wing extremists protesting over having to wear a piece of cloth over their faces? I run out of Goldfish crackers? The suspense continues every day.
2. I have not been laid in God knows how long
When “WAP” came out, that was just the biggest slap in the face. How insensitive. In the middle of a pandemic? Rude. Yes, I am both on antidepressants and have intimacy issues so it’s not like I had much of a chance without the lockdown aspect, but dammit I’m still annoyed. It’s just me and my cheap vibrator against the world now. Please get me off Tinder.
3. I used to have goals
March 2020 was a period of naive expectations. I definitely was among the silly bunch that thought this would all be over in a month tops. I really thought I would be able to do a semester abroad by now. I wanted to snobbily brag about it. I wanted to travel the world, fall in love, or whatever. Live laugh love, right? Remember when we all had long-term goals? Can’t seem to have those anymore. All my cringy teen aspirations have crumbled into rewatching the same shitty sitcom for the twelfth time. Maybe I’ll listen to it in French dub next time just to feel something.
4. My “college experience”
As someone who attended a university with virtually no campus life, this was already disappointing. But, nonetheless, there was still that hope that university would become more exciting than getting stuck in a bus on a mountain after half an inch of snow falls. Instead, I got married to Canvas and Zoom and the most exciting part of SFU is the confetti after I submit an assignment. Seriously, I look forward to that now. This is not what I had in mind. At all.
5. Katy Perry’s oopsie on Twitter
If you missed Katy Perry falling for an edit of people in Italy singing “Roar”, to which she retweeted and used the wrong global flag, you did not experience March 2020 to its fullest. This event keeps me going and it’s also the reason I sometimes can’t sleep at night. I mean was a quick fact check really that hard? Was it even Ms. Perry who tweeted it, or was it a clumsy publicist? There’s so much to unfold. No, I don’t have lectures to watch. Stop asking.
6. Early quarantine trends
March 2020 held the age of Dalgona coffee, baking bread, Tiger King, and Princess Diana nostalgia — also that Doja Cat song that has been so overplayed I sometimes get ringing in my ears after hearing it. Early quarantine trends were truly an innocent era for us all. Except for when Animal Crossing memes corrupted the internet. That was a mistake. It all went downhill from there. Can we go back to this? Why don’t you say so?
7. Socially distanced picnics
This was a thing before everyone decided to give up on human interaction altogether. More specifically, I’m referring to those awkward socially distanced picnics with people you aren’t even friends with anymore. Why did any of us pretend we actually wanted to leave our houses? Don’t lie to me, I know you know what I’m talking about. You didn’t actually want to go on a picnic with Jessica from high school who actually only wants to use you to promote her Arbonne “business.”
8. Cancelled concerts
If I could write an elegy for all the rescheduled concerts that I had tickets for but am no longer interested in, it would be quite short — it was only two. Sorry, Billie Eilish, you’re great but that phase has long passed. But that’s not the point. I am mourning the fun past me would have had, but alas, there’s always next March. Unless there isn’t.
9. The smell of hand sanitizer
The initial craze of sanitizing every object that enters an indoor space will haunt me forever. The fumes of hand sanitizer have burned my last two brain cells. I swear I can smell hand sanitizer when I’m not even using it. It immediately brings me back to the cheap Smirnoff I was once able to chug as a teenager. I can’t even think about that. It’s everywhere.
10. SFU being SFU
The end of the Spring 2020 semester? Tuition increases? The fact that McFogg the Dog is still our mascot? I don’t even have to explain this one.
