Spreading the Word, Not the Virus

 I LIVE in a small bedroom community about twenty miles from a major university town, from where I moved, bought some land, and built my dream home about sixteen years ago. I love it overall, but it takes and keeps me farther from my friends, most of whom either live in the university town, or scattered all across America's fruited plain and beyond. My friends never come to visit me, they having seemingly decided that since it was I who moved away, and since they live in the most important city in the world, the university town, that it is my duty and responsibility to go to the trouble to visit them. most of them have never seen my nice ranch style house, nor my half acre of wooded land, upon which I planted all the trees sixteen years ago, turning a construction site wasteland into an lovely wooded oasis. Their loss, right? I make and receive few phone calls. I grow impatient at leaving messages on cell phones in people's pockets whose owners are too damned lazy or busy to reach into their university town pockets and respond to. I have no cell phone, having grown tired years ao of constantly looking for it, and dropping it in toilets and coffee. My loss, right? For me, a smart phone would be an invitation to disaster, either misplacing it or staring at it all day. My phone is a big box, which never moves. I do not have caller ID, and often people who call do not leave a message, which further annoys and isolates me. Sometimes I am simply too old and slow, dodging to many cats, to reach the phone in time. Their loss, my loss. My normal isolation has intensified during the pandemic, which may have saved m life, and I am probably less affected by the forced, enhanced isolation than any living thing on Earth. Frankly, I rather enjoy it, far from the cacophony of human blather, no offense intended. The other day my best friend called and said he and two other friends wanted to come and hike around the beautiful lake near my home. I hike it often, the rocky wooded path, challenging, four and a half miles around the lake, looking down on the beautiful, blue , cold water. They have never been to my house, nor to the lake, although I've been inviting them for sixteen years. now, suddenly, they want to come. I gave them both answers: no, and hell no. I'm sixty five, and only a few weeks away from the vaccination. meanwhile, the pandemic is raging in America worse than ever, precisely because of people like my friends. Everybody in America thinks he or she is the one person who can continue to do whatever in the hell the normally do, having fun, and avoiding the virus. That's why half a million Americans are dead, or soon will be. Self absorbed arrogance. My friend argued that we'll be outside, that we can meet at the lake, no need for them to come to my house at all, blather, blather, blather. I responded that we can all hike around any lake we choose, at an time, alone. With friends like these, who need enemies, or cell phones, or caller ID?