How are you guys holding up? You good? I’m doing ok — I’m used to having my days filled with client meetings, and then having something after work at least 2x weekly, and then of course, doing stuff on the weekend, and this social distancing is unusually challenging in a way I didn’t expect.

Except, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. I’m going to tell you a little story…

The year was 1992, and I was a happy pre-teen living in Mumbai India. On December 6th, a scared mosque was illegally demolished by a group of Hindu activists (from the current leading political party) in the holy Indian city of Ayodhya, believed to be the birthplace of the Hindu God Rama. Riots broke out nationwide in the weeks that followed, and the city of Mumbai effectively shut down. There were gangs of Hindu activists walking around looting and setting fire to Muslim owned businesses - it was a really shameful time in India’s history that no one really talks about, but now you know. The nationwide communal rioting resulted in over 2000 deaths - it was awful.

Anyway, we were off for Christmas break (we celebrated ALL holidays), so we didn’t have school, but we were all also effectively quarantined to our buildings because it wasn’t safe to be out and about with the rioters running amok. And then one day, I had a MASSIVE tantrum - like full on sobbing - because there wasn’t any bread. And there wasn’t bread because the bakeries were mostly Muslim owned and operated and they had been victims of arson. I had such a meltdown that my mom had to make me waffles to get me to calm down (waffles being my favorite breakfast food). And that was my experience with forced social distancing, that I completely forgot about…until this week.

Cut to the current week. Yesterday I found myself getting really cranky about American chocolate — I have this whole thing where I firmly believe that we’re getting hosed by real inferior candy manufacturing and why can’t I just buy really good, creamy, milk chocolate at a grocery store — and then I remembered my bread meltdown. And realized it had never been about the bread, just like it wasn’t about the chocolate. It’s that I just really really miss being around people.

So if you see me (from over 6 feet away) or talk to me, and I’m having an irrational reaction to some food-related item, just know that it not about food, it’s that I really hate social distancing.

Damn you COVID-19.

Fin.

PS: if you feel like you’re going absolutely INSANE with a lack of human interaction, try having a zoom board-game session. My friend Sunny organized one yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. She and her husband ran the game board and rolled the dice. Trivial Pursuit is really well suited for it, and we even had teammates in different locations discussing answers. Also google hangouts happy hour is a good alternative.