{"id":480,"date":"2020-04-13T15:17:22","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T22:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/?p=480"},"modified":"2020-04-13T15:17:22","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T22:17:22","slug":"thanks-for-the-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/?p=480","title":{"rendered":"Thanks for the Smile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DATELINE, CALIFORNIA, April 10, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I stood in a long line outside the grocery store, each person heeding the marks to stay six feet apart as they waited to enter. A very old man stood in front of me. May 85 or so, bent forward from age and pulling a rolling cart behind him. A much younger man stood in front of him. All of us wore masks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stuffed
Panda-emic<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The younger man told the older man to go in front him. It started a chain reaction, where each subsequent person in line told the older man to go in front of them. The younger man, now in front of me, looked back at me. I smiled at what he had done, but with my mask, I doubted he could tell. (I was also grateful he didn’t tell me to go in front of him because I don’t feel that old yet.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Respecting Social Distances in Line<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After we finished shopping, our cars were parked side by side as we loaded our groceries into our respective trunks. We had pulled off our face masks at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He turned to me and said, (from a safe distance) “We made it! We got our stuff!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Yes, we did,” I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a sense of triumph, a minor victory in the grand scheme of things. Also a feeling of camaraderie I don’t often sense in a big city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Happy Easter. Be safe!” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You too,” I said as we both got in our cars to go back to the safety of our dwellings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Last
Last Pack of Toilet Paper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He made my day, but it doesn’t take much anymore to be ecstatic. I found toilet paper the other day and I felt like the luckiest person in the world. I saw two little girls in pretty Easter dresses, carrying baskets with eggs, delivering them to the house of two other girls. I melted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Girls in Easter Dresses<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As overwhelmed as I am by the news, I’m equally overwhelmed by the goodness that this slowdown has instilled. An unbridled kindness that is now acceptable because we are all in this together. Just a wave and smile to a stranger, a gesture that makes someone else’s day more tolerable and, in a way, says let me make your life less painful. Let me help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DATELINE, CALIFORNIA, April 10, 2020 Today, I stood in a long line outside the grocery store, each person heeding the marks to stay six feet apart as they waited to enter. A very old man stood in front of me. May 85 or so, bent forward from age and pulling a rolling cart behind him. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,21,20,22,19,18,24,23],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coronavirus","tag-easter","tag-grocery","tag-help","tag-panda","tag-pandemic","tag-sigh","tag-smile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.luanneoleas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}