9 Pandemic Habits We're Keeping Forever

Everyone can agree that the pandemic has sucked big giant monkey balls. But, we can also agree that some parts of the pandemic have been… mildly convenient. Kind of nice. Okay, fucking game-changing. And post-pandemic, once we’re all waxed, vaxxed, and ready to party, we don’t want to lose every single thing that’s changed in our weird-ass, upside-down lives. Yeah, we can ditch our Covid haircuts. We can stop sadness shopping on Amazon at 3 a.m.

Amidst our screentime woes, our virtual school blues, and our mask wars, some seismic changes have occurred. Some have been life-changing. World-altering. Some of this weirdness has become our normal, and you can pry it from our vaccinated hands.

No lines at the DMV

If this doesn’t continue post-pandemic, we should stage a protest to bring it back. In the time of COVID, we can call ahead and make a fucking appointment. No lines. No chairs designed for maximum discomfort. No person ahead of you unsure why they’re there in the first place. No Gucci-toting Karen just one person ahead who seems to have forgotten, misplaced, or never owned any form of identification, but who thinks she should be handed whatever anyway, because reasons. No asshole bitching about the line, the likes of which haven’t been seen since Soviet Russia. But dude, bitching will not make the line go faster, so STFU.

Masking during flu season

I do not want to breathe your nasty-ass air. Droplet? Aerosolized? Both as in, “someone else’s respiratory gunk spewing everywhere, which I then take into my own personal lungs”? And by “respiratory gunk,” I mean “mucus”? Hell to the no. Slap that mask on your face, bitchachos. No one wants to see your faceholes.

Grocery delivery

Yes, Grocery Store of my Choice. Please bring me a week’s worth of items, from GoGurt to grapefruit, steak to sugar cookies, drop them at my door, and allow me to rate your service. I will always give you a five/five stars, because I did not have to wrangle screaming toddlers and/or bargain people out of Fruity Pebbles or toilet paper. And if I shop at Whole Foods post-pandemic, I did not have to deal with those fucking kid carts, which are always five seconds away from demolishing a cheese display or toppling someone’s Mee-Maw.

Cultural TV Experiences

First we had the dick-pierced, tiger-abusing, murder-attempting Joe Exotic talking about golden balls and “that bitch Carole Baskin” (plus polygamy) on “Tiger King.” Then Disney dropped season two of “The Mandalorian”: far more wholesome, with far more Sarlacs, and arguably the best thing the “Star Wars” franchise has ever managed. THEY GAVE US BABY YODA. FUCKING BABY YODA. Oh yeah, and there was “WandaVision.” BABY YODA. Give us more of the good stuff post-pandemic, please.

Working from home

Look at me! It’s called a Zoom mullet: business suit on top, pajamas on the bottom! Hopefully employers have realized that we can get shit done virtually, because the Internet is a thing that happened somewhere around 1999 and it is not, like Senator Ted Stevens said, a series of tubes. My ancient-ass phone has more computing power than Apollo 13. Don’t make us see the inside of an actual office again.

Weird pandemic hobbies

Maybe you, like half of America, learned to bake bread. Maybe you cross-stitched. Maybe you decorated cakes or painted or, like me, just glued shit on other shit and called it abstract art. But post-pandemic, we don’t want to jettison our weirdness. We love our indoor succulent gardens and we’ll cut a bitch for our adult coloring books.

Athleisure wear

Are they pajamas? Are they clothes? Are you going running or taking a nap? We can’t tell, and no one gives a fuck. Leggings are daily wear. Comfy shirts are the norm. Fashion standards? There are no fashion standards! Burn your bra, bitches. Ain’t nobody wearing them. Maybe when we leave the house. But when we get home, we drop those sons of bitches on our bedroom floors and free those tits. Post-pandemic, I’m still not wearing a bra around the house. Screw those boobie cages.

Hand sanitizer

Who touched that thing? Did you touch that thing? I don’t know who touched that thing. Someone’s gross hands touched that thing. They might have put their hand in their butt and then touched that thing. I really don’t want to touch that thing. But I totally have to touch that thing. Fuck it, I’m touching that thing. Ew, I can like, feel germs on that thing. Where’s my hand sanitizer? I need my hand sanitizer. I have lots of mini-bottles in many different smells. This is probably cheugy. Go to hell, Gen Z.

Honesty about mental health

“How are you?”

“Pretty shitty, actually.”

“Oh, me too.”

Nothing like honesty with a total stranger to keep the world chugging along. We don’t have to plaster on a rictus grin and say, “I’m fine. How are you?” through clenched teeth anymore. Everyone assumes that everyone else is sort of doing their best to make it, and sort of succeeding but sort of failing at the same time, so it’s okay to say you’re having a shit day or that life sucks or that you’re staring into the void and the void’s staring back. Post-pandemic, let’s keep that up. I’d really hate to go back to lying about life again.

Let’s ditch some things

Post-pandemic, I’d like to jettison my fear of the mailman and stop getting shamed for not making fitness #pandemicgoals. Gwyneth Paltrow can stop crying about carbs. I can’t wait to stop preaching the Gospel of the CDC and hanging on Fauci’s every word, plus indoor dining, y’all.

But don’t you fucking take my Zoom mullet.