Some symptoms of our current madness

Yesterday I learned from one of my students the German word spargelzeit, asparagus time, when everyone goes mad for asparagus. That's not even the most interesting thing I learned in my online classes yesterday; for instance, when a student in the Colson Whitehead class wondered what that longtime NYC resident might be thinking about the current pandemic, I said, "He's on Twitter--go find out," and she did. Turns out Whitehead had been waxing poetic about a box a Wheat Thins that had appeared in his pantry as if by magic. Not terribly relevant to our class discussion, but still.

Spargelzeit was more relevant, not to our class discussion but to the discussion before the discussion, when anyone who shows up a little early for the Zoom meeting sits and chats about any old thing that comes to mind as if starved for human contact, which we indisputably are. I'd been on a grocery run earlier in the day, my first venture out to the store in over two weeks, and the biggest shock was the way people resisted even looking at each other; I gave up offering my usual cheery "Good morning!" after receiving a few sour looks in return. 

I'd been nervous about going to the store even though I'm currently living in a rural Appalachian county reporting zero cases of Covid-19, but I was immensely cheered when I walked into the produce section and saw a display of fresh asparagus. All this talk about food shortages, but who can despair when fresh asparagus is freely available? I put a bunch in the cart and then made my way carefully through the aisles, picking up necessities (bread flour! yogurt! orange juice!) along with a few extras (apple pie! colorful note cards! gel pens!). 

The bill was triple what I generally spend on a week's groceries, but at least I won't have to go back for a while. I used the self-checkout, and I distinctly remember typing in the letters of asparagus to find the price. That was the last time I saw my beautiful bunch of asparagus.

I don't know what happened--either it fell out of the bag or I put it in some bonehead place--but we had no asparagus for supper last night and I don't intend to rush back to the store to replace what I lost. Shopping is too stressful. Everything is too stressful. 

Yesterday while discussing Zone One, the Colson Whitehead class encountered the acronym that explains our current condition: PASD, Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder. The symptoms sound familiar: 

feelings of sadness or unhappiness; irritability or frustration, even over small matters; loss of interest or pleasure in normal activities; reduced sex drive; insomnia or excessive sleeping; changes in appetite leading to weight loss, or increased cravings for food and weight gain; ... agitation or restlessness; being 'jumpy' or easily startled; slowed thinking, speaking, or body movements; indecisiveness, distractability, and decreased concentration...

And on it goes until the novel's main character concludes that "In the new reckoning, a hundred percent of the world was mad."

But at least we're all mad together. In the larger scheme of things, the loss of a bunch of fresh asparagus is nothing to cry over, but I'll tell you what: if asparagus magically shows up at my door, we'll have a whole lotta spargelzeit going on.