Who Makes Friends During a Quarantine?

When my kids were small, our family had a joke that if we had plans to go anywhere, Darling Eldest needed two weeks advance notice and Darling Youngest should only be told once they were buckled in the car seat. Darling Youngest has always been super social, wanting to be in the thick of every gathering and wanting to be there NOW. We used to call them “The Mayor” based on how easily they made friends and end up knowing pretty much everyone wherever we went.

Darling Youngest at the prom, just a couple of weeks ago.

As you may have guessed, the last couple of weeks have been tough on them. It wasn’t too bad when school got cancelled one day, but when it turned into a week (and now at least two weeks) they weren’t amused. Then the plans for a big birthday sleepover had to be scrapped. The local malls closed. The clubs that meant so much to them canceled events. No more all-day Dungeons & Dragons sessions at friends’ homes. No more wandering around town.

There were tears. And a bit of screaming.

Although my introverted self could not relate, I still felt bad for them. I spent a little time trying to find fun things to do. I tracked down some neat concerts, virtual museum visits, and performances from theater kids after they retreated to their bedroom in a huff. But when they came out again, they were quite excited.

One of their favorite influencers on Instagram, Jessi Paege, started encouraging her followers to start group chats to support each other. Darling Youngest made several new friends right away and has been happily texting them back and forth since then.

At first I thought, “Leave it to the Mayor to come out of this with a bunch of new friends.” And while that’s true, I thought of all the cool things I found researching and how wonderfully adaptive people are in finding creative ways to connect. I don’t know how long this will last, or how bad it will end up being. But I know that ways exist to keep connecting, keep living, in spite of it all, and that is a comfort.

Who makes friends during a quarantine? Anyone who'd like to.

Song Choice: This video of folks in Italy singing together

This post was created for Poets and Storytellers United’s Weekly Scribblings: Hypophora and All That. Come and connect with us there. Also, you may want to keep an eye on my Facebook page and Instagram. I might try my hand at video readings to do my part at making this period of time feel a little bit less isolating. How are you keeping yourself occupied? Tell me all about it in the comments.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

The Cuteness of Corg (Resistance was Futile)

Figures, I thought, staring at the door. He’d use my love of anime to get me to face up to my worst fear. “Well, let’s get this over with,” I said.

Eric attempted to rope in his giddiness, but his glee came out in his voice. “I swear we’ll leave if you get too uncomfortable. It’s not like we’re getting a dog today. What’re the chances there’s a corgi here?” He held the door open for me to walk into the dog rescue center.

When we first started dating, I thought the differences in our religions would be one of the hardest obstacles to overcome. Nope. Eric was a dog lover. A raised-one-from-a-pup, had-wholesome-adventures-together, hard-core, unabashed dog lover.

Me? Well, a neighbor dog jumped on me when I was 4. I knew now that the face licking meant he was happy to see me, not taking a taste test. But you couldn’t tell 4-year-old me that. Since then, I had a hard time not running in the other direction, screaming as if Cerberus himself were about to drag me into the netherworld, if I saw so much as a chihuahua.  

But Eric was persistent. I got to be comfortable with a dog walking on the same street as me. When I said the dog on the anime Cowboy Bebop looked cute, he claimed victory, researching that type of dog and extolling their virtues with all the zeal of an infomercial spokesman.

I walked through the doors, ready to bolt if it became too much. And there, in a cage right in front of me was a tiny corgi pup, shivering next to a St. Bernard. The attendant put her on my lap, we both looked at each other and stopped shaking.

“We are not leaving here without her,” I said.

“What are we naming her?” Eric grinned.

“Faye Valentine, like the anime.”

This was my Faye. We had twelve really great years together. 

Thanks for making a dog lover, sweet girl.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Song Choice: Tank from the anime series Cowboy Bebop

Liner Notes for this Groove: This non-fiction prose piece was created for Pantry of Prose over at Poets United.

Going to the Dogs

The following is an article I submitted for publication. The theme was a big change that occurred in the writer's life. I never heard back from the people I submitted it to and it's been several months, so I decided to pop it here. Enjoy.

This may sound a bit kooky, but one of the big changes that happened in my life was overcoming my fear of dogs. I remember when it started. We had a neighbor who kept, what was to my 5 year old eyes, a massive dog of indeterminate breed. My mom pitied it and so from time to time she’d feed it scraps. One day I went with her, and the dog, overjoyed at the possibility of a snack broke through whatever was keeping it staked and pulled a Dino Flintstone on me.

“I’m going to die of rabies,” I told my pediatrician solemnly.

I had recently seen Old Yeller and what stuck was not the bittersweet story of a boy and his dog, but the idea that any time, when you least expect it, dogs can turn on you.

“Uh-huh,” he said.

He was used to my precocious babbling and to my mother’s nervous streak. This was the woman who brought me in every time I sniffled. Of course she’d want a scrape checked out (never mind that the scrape was caused by my tripping on the sidewalk – the dog itself didn’t harm me beyond subjecting me to its breath). The doctor assured us nothing was broken, I didn’t have rabies and that was that.

Except it wasn’t. From then on, the sight of any dog got me screaming. The sound of jingling keys sounded so much like dog tags to me that I’d actually flinch if I heard them. I didn’t learn to ride a bike because I was petrified I wouldn’t be able to pedal fast enough to escape any dogs that might be nearby.

“I have a phobia,” I later told my pediatrician.

“Uh-huh”

I don’t know if he ever talked to my parents about dealing with it, but nothing really was done. I coped by becoming an indoors child, only going out if one of my parents was near me. By college I was OK if the dog was tiny and on a leash. But I’d still make an excuse to be elsewhere, fast.

College was where I met my husband, a terrific guy and an unapologetic dog lover. We discussed everything before getting married, our thoughts on religion, kids, finances – but we never discussed dogs. I should have realized this was going to be an issue. He’d get the same misty look over a puppy that some people get over babies. No dog would go un-scratched in his presence. So when he started asking about dogs, I let him know I’d rather have a root canal during labor. Not one to give up easily he’d bring it up regularly, wise enough to drop it if I was getting too twitchy, but always looking for a way to bring it up if he could.

“So…corgis are cute,” he said casually after watching an anime series featuring one.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

Well, they were kind of cute, with their little legs and fox-like appearance. I told him I might consider a corgi. But just because I thought they were cute as a cartoon didn’t mean I’d be OK with them in actuality. I reminded him I’d still be nervous. It didn’t matter. He took the small bone I threw him and began Campaign Corgi in earnest.

One day we happened to be driving by a dog rescue. He pleaded with me to go in to look. I told him that unless there was an actual corgi in there, I was going to turn around and go back to the car. So of course, there in a cage with a giant St Bernard, was a wee corgi puppy. Triumphantly, my husband walked over to the man coordinating things and asked to see the corgi. I’m still not exactly sure how it happened, but somehow they got me to sit down and put that tiny corgi in my lap. I remember still being nervous. The dog was trembling too, right up until the moment she was on my lap. And then she looked and me, I looked at her and we both stopped shaking.

In the almost 13 I’ve had Faye, she’s taught me a lot of things. One, I’m actually something of a nature lover when not terrified. I can’t imagine not being outside at least a little every day. Two, I’m a really dog person! Three, it’s sad when fear keeps you from being everything you could become. Four, love has a way of breaking fear.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks