Editor’s Note: Humorist Jerry Klinger is in the process of bringing to market Boynton Beach Memoirs, a collection of stories about life in the retirement community of Boynton Beach, which has an ever-growing population of Jewish seniors. With that book going to publication, he decided to write a sequel and below is a chapter he penned for it about the coronavirus pandemic. His fictional protagonist is named William Rabinowitz, who is married to Sheila.
BOYNTON BEACH, Florida — The wife and I are near panic. Actually not, but it is great Jewish guilt to share it with the kids who are a thousand miles away up north. After all these years of having lived in our house, until they were eagerly able to escape when the choices were college or the army, they know our sense of humor.
All the media is filled with Coronavirus news, 24/7. Disaster, end of times, end of the world, don’t touch, no shaking hands, no elbow bumping, be weary of Fido, is the script.
Dr. Oz advised, stay home, don’t go out, take it easy, relax. If you must go out, when you come back in, leave all your clothing in the foyer. The Virus can live for days on your clothing. Take a hot shower with lots of anti-bacterial soap polished off with Irish Spring. To be safest of all, don’t go out. Stay home, you’re naked anyway. Have sex.
Dr. Oz always has great advice.
If something is coming to kill me, the good Dr.’s advice has a ring of comfort to it. I just have to convince the wife his advice can daily save our lives.
“Sheila, we have to shelter in place. Don’t pick up any packages left on our doorstep by Amazon or anyone, for at least three days. The Virus might live on the cardboard box that long. I know that box has been out there for three days. I will go out and magic marker the date on the box. After three days, I will bring it in”.
“A small package came in the mail today. It was the book you wanted, The Plot Against America. When I realized it was paperback, and thinking of you, I immediately microwaved it. Safety is numero uno!”.
“I realize it is dangerous. But for you, I will take the chance even if I might get the Virus stepping outside or otherwise,” I told her.
What can I do, my cooking is getting terrible, and the wife is asking what did I make for dinner? I will call Mario’s Italian Deli. They deliver. Great food by far. But…their delivery comes wrapped up by a stranger, going from house to house, a regular typhoid Tony possibly spreading Coronavirus? I can’t touch the deliciously smelling plastic wrapped items on the doorstep next to the Amazon boxes.
What if the Mario delivery person left the lasagna on top of one of the piling up Amazon boxes?
What choice? There is no good choice, I have to leave Mario’s lasagna outside waiting for three days to be sure I can touch it safely, and the Virus has died. Or has it?
Mario’s food is so good it can revive any flagging Virus.
“That’s it,” I tell the wife. “We have to get away from the dangers of the congested city”.
But where?
A place just an hour north of here came right to mind. “Sheila, I know where we can go and be safe from the Coronavirus, Sunny Palms. Nothing can live in the swamp for long. Every urban Yiddishe boychick knows that”.
Inspiration had struck between the furrowed, eyebrowed, forehead flowing with worried perspiration.
Eureka, of course, Sunny Palms, just an hour away. If everything has Virus on it, the best place to go is a Nudist Colony. No Virus in its right mind wants to go there. It would be shocked to death by the sights. We would be safe.
Norman, our dog, is a problem. He has a nice furry coat. A coat means Virus.
We can get him shaved. He has never been modest about anything even when he and his favorite pillow friend have a little tryst in the middle of the living room floor.
I brought the idea up to the wife. It did not go over well.
“Are you meshuggah?” she asked. “If I refused to wear that tiger skin negligee last Purim, I am certainly not going to a Nudist Colony where everyone will see my c-section scars. They never healed invisibly you know. We should have sued that doctor for such sloppy stitch work.”
O.K., the Nudist Colony idea surrounded by Virus-eating alligators and Burmese pythons is out.
We discussed other ideas to find shelter from the Coronavirus.
“We could go to my ranch in New Mexico,” I said. “It is far out in the desert, very alone.”
The wife looked at me. “You mean that half acre of desert retirement investment you bought as a college student for $5.00 a month for 66 months from the back of a magazine? We still have that? I thought you were going to sell it in postage stamp lots to Japanese folks who wanted to own a piece of the Old Wild West.”
“That did not work out so well, did it? Besides, how are we going to get there? Fly? No, drive? Forget it!” There is no water on the property. Where do we live, in a tent and sleeping bags? There is water, there you say? 10,000’ feet down? You will bring a post hole digger.”
My ranch in New Mexico will not work.
Moving to a mountain top will not work. In Southern Florida, the highest point is Mt. Sample. It is 376’ high. It is also the county land fill.
“The Bahamas are just a few miles off the coast. Lots of tiny deserted islands,” I said. “O.K., they have a few little problems. I have to get there by boat, and I know I get really seasick. But we will be safe once we get to one. The only other problem is high tide. They have a tendency to be underwater at high tide.”
The Bahamas Island sanctuary idea did not work.
Nor did the idea of going to Central Africa. For some reason, according to the Johns Hopkins, Coronavirus terror map I look at every five minutes, there is no Coronavirus in Central Africa.
The wife did not buy that idea either.
“Space, we could go to outer-space,” I brightened with a grin. “Cape Kennedy is two hours north of here. We could book two seats on the next Space-X trip to the International Space Station. We see it every night in the sky. I’ll call Cape Kennedy operations and see if they take credit cards. It would be great if we could get miles. You know I am a Million Mile Gold Card Traveler on American Airlines.”
Not even a reaction from the wife.
Never to give up, there has to be a solution to be safe from the Coronavirus.
Then it came to me. If there is no real way to hide from the Coronavirus, and statistically, anyway, people who are in their thirties or younger have very little risk if they get it, so we have a solution.
“Sheila,” I said. “Get in the Car. I know how we can be safe from the Virus. Ponce De Leon failed, but I, William Rabinowitz, the great Florida intrepid traveler has something Ponce did not. I have a map. It is a map showing where in Florida, north again, near St. Augustine, is the Fountain of Youth.”
“Sheila, if we can’t escape the Virus, we can beat it by becoming young again. Go pack some towels and our bathing suits. We are going to turn back the hands of time and become younger than our kids. But first, wash your hands for at least 20 seconds per hand with hot sudsy water before you pack our bag.”
At this point, Sheila was laughing so hard she had to sit and hold her ribs in place.
“William,” she said. “I have a simpler solution. You might actually enjoy it”.
She went to the desk and took out a large sheet of paper and a bright orange marker. She wrote on the paper, Nudist Colony, Viruses not permitted, and scotch taped it to our front door.
“William, I think you are right. No Virus in its right mind will want to come in here now.”
With a twinkle in her eye to me, she headed for the bedroom.
I might have been a C- student in school but I am not stupid. I followed the wife’s lead on fighting off the Coronavirus.
*
From the Boynton Beach Chronicles, Tales of Norman, Vol II, to be released sometime after Vol. I comes out early April, God willing. Humorist Klinger, in a more serious vein, is president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, which places markers around the United States telling the stories of Jewish contributions to the Amrican story.