Control: Panic!

I, Dalton Lewis, panic every once in a while. I remember, back when I was driving a car around the northern Chicago suburbs, panicking because I was about to slam into another car. I did indeed slam into the car and hurt my knee, an injury which lingers to today — when I choose to no longer drive anywhere, anytime, ever.

Panic happens. Why? There’s that temptation, that quiet voice in your head, that says to run away from the infected area into a less-infected area even if you have coronavirus. This spreads it. Panic and fear spread the coronavirus.

I remember when I was a kid I was scared — of all sorts of things. There was a setup in which someone would ascend twenty feet up into a passageway between trees and run across. I stood there, unable to do it. I went down the conventional way and looked at my classmates. They showed up and bounded from tree to tree, not noticing any danger or caring at all.

I remember, as a little child, running around in front of my house. We didn’t have many video games yet so I needed to go outside and play with toys and run in circles around my home, pretending to fight bad guys. A wasp stung me, and I felt pain like I had never felt in my life. I screamed and screamed and cried and couldn’t handle it. I never forgot that.

One of my uber drivers screamed at me for farting in his car. He looked back at me, in the early parts of late night, as I rode home from a movie. I looked up at him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I will fuck you up,” he said. “I drive people, scary people. People from North Chicago. People aren’t bad. They’re all good, good people. Not you. You remember, I know where you live. And you don’t give me one star. Don’t you fucking give me one star.”

I was scared of that guy. He got four stars.

I’m scared now, of this coronavirus thing. I don’t want my elderly parents to die. I don’t want to die, not of this, not at this age. This thing kills people who are fat and old and sick and diabetic. I am most of those. I don’t want this thing to destroy me. I want to be healthy for a number of years. There are 2500 cases in the US now? There are hundreds of new cases a day? Jesus. Fucking. Christ. This is getting bad. I know — we shouldn’t panic. I won’t panic. I’m just panicking, is all.

Thanks, and take care, friends.