Frogs in the Pot

The cliché confirms that if you place a frog in a pot of water and increase the temperature a degree at a time that the frog will continue to acclimate itself to a raising temperature high that will eventually boil it. The suggestion seems to be that if the increments of change are slow enough that a species can learn to tolerate anything. Austerlitz, the eponymous character in W.G. Sebald’s novel says, “We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.” Frogs in the pot on the stove: such might we be when I look to the incremental changes that have been wrought in our lives and our consciousnesses as a result of the pandemic. I wonder about the choices we now make in response to and because of it. For example, we now travel everywhere carrying our wearing our K95 masks. Many of us travel with bearing several COVID tests. We sanitize our hands and faces regularly and maintain in our packs and bags small tubes of personal sanitizers. In every bathroom accompanying warning the “Employees must wash their hands before returning to work!” is posted new instructions saying that hand washing for the rest of us should take at least 20 seconds. I suppose the same time frame governs the sanitary habits of the workers returning to work. We have learned to work remotely, much to the horror of the real estate moguls who charge high rent for office spaces no longer necessary and employers who worry that their workers are sloughing off. People wear lovely tops to zoom meetings but often sit in their underwear or shorts during them. During the pandemic we employed delivery services to get our foods and other necessities, like toilet paper, because attendance in public indoor spaces was dangerous. I ventured there anyway. I remember how at the beginning of the pandemic I was shopping at the local supermarket during the half-hour or so reserved for adults who were over the age of 62 or 65 years old, I do not remember which,  and I was walking masked down an aisle—maybe the one with boxes of cold cereal or frozen foods—when from the recommended six feet distance, someone called out “Hello, Alan.” But both of us were both masked and I did not recognize the caller’s upper face or voice, and I did not dare move any closer than the required six feet or to admit to the pseudo-stranger my ignorance of her identity. Because the restaurants were closed, we had our food delivered to our doors. These services exploded in size. Now having learned to employ delivery services to bring our shopping lists and dinners and sanitary supplies to our doors we can avoid 1) the effort of schlepping home from the stores the overfilled bags, 2) the anxiety-causing presence of crowds, and 3) the necessity of driving to the restaurant to pick up the take-away. We remain inside. Today, when I go to the supermarket the aisles are heavily crowded with unmasked professional shoppers, carrying lists emailed, I suppose, to the store. I like to browse the aisles and buy more than I ought to carry home. I baked a great deal of bread during the pandemic: the number of loaves in my freezer was a measure of the level of my anxiety; I cooked a wide variety of soups, many of which tasted too similar. Not dining out my culinary skills developed. Of course, then we dined out less frequently, and today we continue not to dine out preferring remarkably enough, my prepared foods. And breads, of course. Streets in many urban and suburban areas are now spotted with almost permanent outdoor heated structures that had been constructed during the pandemic when seating in restaurants was declared too risky for indoor dining. Winter al fresco dining has become now available. Incremental changes too slight to notice even as our lives outside our awareness have been irrevocably changed and we continue on, as Fitzgerald might acknowledge, “boats against the current,” under new conditions that we assume now are normal. I guess we think we are heading forward but really we haven’t the faintest idea our direction. We haven’t yet begun to seriously considered the impact on our psyches accompanying those overt physical changes in our environments. But at our backs we hear and fear the next pandemic. And the temperature of the water rises degree by degree.

A nor’easter storm (I think that is a redundancy) headed toward, yes, the northeast, and threatened to drop a great deal of snow in New York, and the Department of Education ordered the schools closed and ordered the teachers and students to activate and engage in remote learning, the latter a practice begun during the pandemic when schools and classrooms were deemed too dangerous for students (but not necessarily for teachers)to be in attendance. I raise this issue because what has been lost is the possibility of SNOW DAYS, when schools closed because the transportations systems could not get students to the school building and students who had to walk were placed too much at risk. Television and radio programs would report the various school closings as the notices would arrive, and I remember watching assiduously for the appearance of my school district to appear on the screen. Or alternatively, I could await the call from the phone chain The call would come in early from the phone chain established for such emergencies; The phone might ring even before I had awakened and the voice on the other end would say, “Snow Day, go back to sleep.” I would sleepily call the next person on the list, announce the surprise holiday and return to bed for a short time. As a teacher, I remember school days as my favorite holiday, better than Winter or Spring Break. Snow days happened unexpectedly, and they were contractually negotiated and so teachers need not use sick leave or personal days to enjoy the day.  Though in a severe, snowy winter too many snow days might be declared, and the school year needed to be extended: the Board of Regents had mandated that the length of a school year be measured in the number of days students were in attendance. Hence one important factor for the significance of reporting to the state daily student attendance: that is one way school districts received state aid. The snow day was moments of perfect freedom. Snow day school closings were unexpected and many of us had left the tools of our trade at our desks: we had at home no papers to grade, no lessons to deliver or prepare, no more futures to decide. But with the arrival of computers soon the phone calls turned into mass generated emails and with the advent of cell phones and text messages, it seemed to me that the joy on the phone line announcing a snow day was lost. As was the personal connection the phone call made possible. For students, of course, the loss the snow day meant no sledding, no building snowmen and women and binary snowpersons, no snow forts snowball fights. Shoveling walks and driveways for pocket monies became unworkable. Incrementally, the temperature of the water in the pot rose had risen and we didn’t notice really notice but just accepted the change of practice. We didn’t consider perhaps the consequences.

            Snow days are no more. The day proceeds almost as normal. The significant word here is ‘normal.’ The temperature in the pot has been raised; the environment is changed. And we again grow cozy with the heat. Until, I suppose, it kills us, or changes us forever.