My Perilous Journey through Haterfield

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I live in Camden County, New Jersey. It's in the southern part of the state, and therefore not nearly as overrun with the killer virus as other areas. Still and all, there are 1400 cases of coronavirus in the county right now, including a reported 20 in Haterfield, where I live. Eighty people have died.

As contrast, on March 13 when I left my classroom and locked the door, there were 3 cases in Camden County.

I'm a woman of a certain age, married to a man who was hospitalized with pneumonia back before any of this got under way. You can best bet I am heeding all the warnings. It helps to read the New York Times every day, because they are pulling no punches in their descriptions of the course of the illness. To call it a blow-by-blow worst case scenario would be hitting the nail on the head.

When one is confined to one's home, surrounded by foodstuffs one amassed prior to any governmental decrees, one tends to wander into the kitchen to whip up a batch of cookies. Every day. This, of course, has led to the COVID 15, meaning weight gain.

Inevitably it becomes necessary to take a stroll outside.

There's a little county park nearby, but it is knee-deep in mud, and I have the ruined pants and shoes to prove it. Therefore, today I decided to walk through the small Haterfield downtown district. What a disaster.

First of all, everybody is saying that there's so much less traffic than usual. Nobody told Haterfield. The traffic is as bad as ever. There are lots of pedestrians, too. Most of them weren't wearing masks.

I had my bandanna on and my hoodie pulled up over my head, and my sunglasses. I know all that stuff won't protect me, but I am courteous.

Pure foolishness led me through the door of the small CVS on Haterfield's main street. There was an employee right inside the door. She was not wearing a mask.

I asked her, "Do you have toilet paper?"

"No!" she barked. Like to take my head off.

I did a 180 and got the hell out of Dodge as quick as I could. Perhaps it was my "thug chic" attire? Perhaps she has had to answer that question 1000 times? Maybe she's just not a nice person.

So I'm walking back toward home, down a street that I hoped wouldn't be crowded. There was a woman walking on the other side of the street, no mask, talking loudly on the phone. To whit:

"YEAH THEY SENT HIM HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL. THEY SAID HIS OXYGEN LEVELS WERE BETTER. AND NOW HIS GIRLFRIEND DOESN'T FEEL GOOD AND HIS DAD, AND I'M REALLY WONDERING..."

I didn't hear the rest because I was holding my breath and sprinting in the other direction as fast as my flabby legs could take me.

Wowsa! The perils of walking in Haterfield!

Stay at home, my friends. I've learned my lesson. Tomorrow and for the unforseeable future I intend to sweep my floors briskly every day. Rake the yard even if it doesn't need it. Make my cookies heavier, so that I'll be working out by lifting them to my mouth.

No more Haterfield for me.