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NOT THIS HOUSE — When the coronavirus restrictions all began, staying at home seemed easy. The introverts breathed a collective sigh of relief at the perfect excuse to avoid social interaction, students had a shred of hope for online classes not being “that bad,” and we hunkered down with our Hulu.
I mean, it’s not like staying home, eating Cheetos, and marathoning movies could be collectively traumatizing, right?
Some naive parents even thought, “Well, it’ll be some good family bonding time.” Oh, sweet summer child, may you rest in peace on your work-from-home laptop with a baby still bouncing on your knee while your eldest screams from the kitchen.
We may have misjudged this whole thing. Nothing makes you hate everyone as quickly as being stuck with them 24/7; and on the off chance you still don’t want to kill your housemates, you’ll likely want to die of sheer boredom. Cue the Spongebob “one eternity later” montage.
Two months in, writing this feels vaguely like keeping a captain’s log in a dystopian Star Trek episode. Stardate is 73825.4 and we've officially passed the political screeching quadrant of our galaxy. Next comes the plague of murder hornets.
Luckily, this little guy is perfectly able to summarize our feelings.
“I hate this house!”
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) May 11, 2020
Little Man is all of us during the Cornonavirus pandemic... pic.twitter.com/KN1JlYguZn
He’s ready to go. He hates this house, and he doesn’t care who knows it.
It’s time for a jailbreak, and he commits one perfectly … er, well, as perfectly as you can while your mom stands behind you and calmly asks, “Where are you going?”
He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he’s going out. Like the pioneers and mountain men into the great unknown, he’ll brave anything for a change of scenery. Sometimes where you’re going is less important than what you’re running from.
And as the door shuts behind him and we get a dwindling glimpse of his tiny feet running down the hall, everything becomes clear: This toddler cannot be contained, and he is not in the house.
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