Wednesday, May 27, 2020

I've been looking forward to this Israeli Breakfast for a while. I should be eating dinner now. I don’t care. Neither does the cashier. He takes my order, asking for all the variables. I get through the whole thing without getting stuck. I wait for them to call my name at the counter, standing behind the line that others ignore. I pick up my tray and bring it to my table when It's ready. There have been some substitutions: whole wheat bread rather than multi-grain, and some sort of shredded cheese rather than avocado. That’s OK. While we need to wear masks to enter the mall, fewer than half the people inside are wearing them properly. No one working in the cafe is. Most have them down below their chins. Some cover their mouths but not their noses, or pull them down to speak. They seem to wear them as talismans, there to magically protect them from harm rather than to have any concrete function. The driver on the bus home seems to think of its brakes the same way. As long as he steps on the pedal somewhere near an intersection, regardless of exactly when or how hard, he'll be protected from harm. The same isn't true for the passengers, who slam into the seats in front of them or cry out when we almost hit a bicycle. But he isn't bothered by these details. At least the buses are running again, at their usual stops and something like their usual schedules, assuming that by "usual" we mean that traffic is once again terrifying. I guess It's a start.