March 2, 2021: Here's What You Do -

One time, I picked my daughter up from day care on my way home from work, and told her to hop into her car seat so I could buckle her in. But the latch of the buckle was broken. I tried a few times, and then said, Well, kiddo, we are only six blocks from home (six quiet blocks, I might add), so hang on and we’ll get home, and deal.

She replied, full volume, “I’m GONNA DIE!!!!”

I realized we had perhaps overshot with our “you’ve got to stay buckled in your car seat” safety talks.

This scene came back to me because of the paucity of vaccine, and the onslaught of “SCARY VARIANT” headlines. We may have overshot just a little at amping up the anxiety. Or not! Maybe this is just right.

I got into a chat, inadvertently, with a checker at Safeway this morning. It happened because I said something like, “You’re a pro, I bet you can pack all these groceries into this bag I brought.” She bridled, and said she couldn’t TOUCH my bag, and I said Oh, of course, sorry, you are right.

But she was just getting started. Now THEY say she can’t touch things! THEY say she has to wash all her clothes, because it’s on her clothes! THEY used to say no masks, and then they said masks, and now they say NO MASKS, again! (I’m making my confused “Really?” face.) THEY don’t know anything! NOTHING! NOW THERE ARE THREE vaccines!

Yes, I said, but that’s a good thing! Three vaccines are a good thing!

They’re all DIFFERENT, she said, as if with that little fact, she had tidily destroyed MY flimsy argument.

That’s okay! I said, foolishly. It’s okay, because they all work! Almost NO hospitalizations! NO deaths! Nobody who has been fully vaccinated has died from COVID. Nobody!

HMPH, said she, How do they know THAT?

They tested them on thousands of people, said I!

You can HAVE MINE, said she. I don’t need it! My mom’s seventy, and she wants it, but she couldn’t get an appointment, and now they have BYPASSED her, and they are giving it to other people.

It went on like that. Moving target of grievance and skepticism. You may have conversations like this all the time, but she was only my second.

The first “I don’t want it” person I ran into was convinced the vaccine was the Mark of the Beast. I was thrown by this, got momentarily lost wondering if she was thinking about a MARK sort of mark, like the little scar on my upper arm? Did somebody think those old vaccination marks were Marks of the Beast? If I told her this one doesn’t leave a MARK, would that help? But I hauled myself back to the matter at hand and tried to think of something even remotely Biblical, which appeared to be where she was stuck. I said, “You know, I think maybe another way to look at it is: It’s a  good way to Love Your Neighbor.”

This was fruitless, of course.

I am not suited to persuading vaccine-hesitant (such a measly phrase, “vaccine-hesitant,” also, hahaha, “measly!”) people to reconsider their stance. If I were aiming to get good at that, I would trail like a little duckling after Dr. Kimberly D. Manning (@gradydoctor), and learn from her gentle way of listening to people. (Then I’d get a personality transplant, and then I might be good to go.)

Dr. Manning tells stories on her Twitter feed about conversations she has had with people (workers at her hospital, kids at the car wash, anybody), and why they were hesitant. She just greets them with a cheery, So, you going to get a shot? I don’t think I’ve read one story yet where the person didn’t say they’d think about it, and thank her for listening to their concerns.

The checker did not thank me for listening to her concerns. But she actually reminded me, in her way, that it is super-unlikely I’m GONNA DIE. And if I lay low, I’m probably not GONNA KILL ANYBODY either. Win-win!

The checker was the low of my Safeway visit. The high was the woman in the pharmacy (I was there for another reason, not a vaccination), who, when she heard I hadn’t yet secured an appointment, said Wait! I have something to say to you!

Then she scurried to a distant computer monitor, and scurried back, and motioned me to lean into the plexiglass. She had her head on it from her side, and I had my  head on it from mine. I admit, I was hoping she might magically whisper that she had an extra dose back there, but instead she said, as softly as she could, “Okay, here’s what you do. You go to Safeway.com….”