Over my Skis

I don’t think I’m trying to incriminate myself by writing this, and I hope this doesn’t wind up the document that people show each other a few months from now and say “see, he deserved what he got” (and, goddamn, am I tempting fate even writing this?), but I must be honest with myself when I say that I think yesterday was my first big misstep of the Covid-19 era.

Nothing dramatic happened, really. I went to a party and spent probably 40% of the party inside. It wasn’t a lot of people, maybe 20 people all-in, all vaccinated. Most of our time was outside in a lawn or on a deck, but I was there for two hours and spent probably 30-40 minutes of that time in the house. What’s really getting to me, I think, is that I didn’t really even think about it. It didn’t occur to me until I was driving home that I had elevated my risk profile. It was, I think, the most time I spent inside with people who were not immediate family in something close to two years.

I guess this how it goes, right? You keep your guard up and you’re on high alert, and eventually you start to drop your guard, a little bit at a time, until you’re guard really isn’t even up anymore. That’s when things get you, if they’re going to get you. It’s been 18 months of this. No one is perfect, even the people who remain shut up and disconnected. But still, I’ve got kids. I’ve got a family. I worry what I may have exposed them to.

But even that’s kind of a moving goalpost, because isn’t my daughter in daycare? Isn’t she exposed to 15 other kids every day, with households I cannot account for? Isn’t the same true of my immediate family, who I see a fair amount, and their expanded circles?

Look, I don’t know the right answer here. I think if I could do it again, I’d go in through the damn back door and stay outside the whole time. I’ll get tested, wait for my booster shot, and hope for the best. But I feel like I was dumb and wanted to get it out somewhere, so here it is, out now.