I am a very impatient person when it comes to waiting in line. A few minutes at most, or I walk out. The COVID-19 crisis is forcing me to re-evaluate.

I think of 20th century famines, virtually incomprehensible to “first-world” thinking. In eastern Europe, people queued in lines, sometimes all night, for meager pickings. And even then, merchandise was often completely sold out after a 10-hour wait. Leningrad epitomized the worst, where starving townsfolk stepped over their dead in slow processions snaked across several blocks, often in temperatures dipping to 40 below.

I remember the gas lines of the ’70s, waiting anxiously for that invaluable fuel, as if our lives depended on it.

Now coming off the strongest economy in recorded history, we again see car lines, some exceeding four miles, all waiting patiently for a rationed handout of food – this after less than two weeks of unemployment. The familiar refrain of living “paycheck-to-paycheck,” a catchphrase rarely taken literally, is now proving itself true in the world’s richest, most advanced country.

What stands out so dramatically in these car lines is that the majority of vehicles look almost new. People don’t queue in horse-drawn wagons, but in shiny SUVs, pick-ups and minivans.

If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed our vulnerabilities. Swimming pools, boats, snowmobiles and Mercedes: none of it means much when crisis hits, especially with so many of us living “paycheck to paycheck.”

​Jeffrey T. Leonards, Ph.D.​

Buxton

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