Katrina Smith-Johnson at Walmart with Mask April 2020
So do you remember when The Hunger Games came out in theaters and everyone was impressed with its colorful images of the future? The bold hair colors and clothes that were on fire but didn’t burn you. The different districts that were so very strange and unique. Yea, well the future doesn’t look like that at all.
Peeta and Katniss members of district 12 male and female volunteers and tributes for the Hunger Games.
The future is people wearing homemade cotton face masks with little pink and purple flowers made from the material your mother made a dress from last summer or maybe a bedspread. The color of your hair is likely faded, graying and might be growing out. Your beards are not trimmed but full, wavey and unkempt from a month of growth with no wear to go. You certainly are not wearing a fancy hat with your mask. You need to be able to change or replace that mask without touching your hair or face.
Hand holding is forbidden. Katniss from the Huger Games would never think of slipping her hand into a man’s hand these days. It’s no secret we are not allowing touching or even hugs. We talk through clear plastic shields or glass windows at stores and nursing homes. We see nurses flip up their splash shields only when the room has been cleared. We wear gloves everywhere and toss them out every chance we get. Sometimes they even cover our raw skin from scrubbing and sanitizing too much.
tributes and volunteers for the Hunger Games
We have no volunteers to fight this battle, we find no tributes to call on. We only have the highly trained staff of doctors and nurses that are willing to fight. We have Fireman, Policeman, and EMTs who are choosing weapons, but they look nothing like a gun or bow.
Our list of the dead doesn’t show in the sky projected over the wilderness so everyone can keep track. Instead, we follow the accounts of the death toll in the large cities on the TV. We are glued to every report. In this futuristic drama, the woods are your safe haven and at times the only escape from the overcrowding and spreading germs of the huge cities.
It seems everyone has enough to eat. Although, I have found myself wondering if we would kill each other over toilet paper and paper towels. I know I would have been willing to stand in a line to get hand sanitizer and bleach.
But the biggest difference of all is we are at home. We are warm, with fresh running water, with wifi and TV. We are not shipping off to some foreign land to fight for our lives. The war will be won at home watching, praying, washing and scrubbing to save our lives.
This pandemic seems to be won by West Virginia, (681 cases at our peak of infection) and we are doing the winning by living the life we enjoy. We have always loved being at home, living in small towns, playing outdoors and working outside. It seems that being a mountaineer has its advantages in these trying times.
Who knew that a small mining state that struggles with money issues is the winner of the Corna-19 games. That men and women that hunt and fish are actually the best suited to take care of their state and people. For today my state is better off than Hollywood, New York City and many people know it.
Such strange times for me and my family…..as we continue to pray, wash and scrub our way into a new future.
West Virginia Mountain Mama 