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Reflections on the day of the 2020 DNC
This is not my first quarantine. And, despite the surge of cases in Florida where I currently find myself, this quasi-lockdown is far less stringent than my first in 1984, during my senior year in high school.
For some, a senior year quarantine might’ve spelled disaster. And, while I wasn’t psyched about being stuck home alone, I abhorred high school. So it wasn’t the worst thing I could imagine. The worst, I thought in my youthful swagger, already had happened.
Growing up, my family moved with an alarming frequency, nine times by the time I was 12. And I loved it.
Each new school offered the chance to reinvent myself, to try and win at the game of being popular. This was before Instagram. Before Facebook. Hell, this was before the Internet. My only source material for new locales was an outdated Encyclopaedia Britannica, which I consulted, despite being aware that knowing a state’s bird does nothing to increase your popularity. In fact, the opposite. Knowing the right clothes to wear? Whole other story. But I had no way of presaging that.
Over the years this led to some insanely uncomfortable moments, like in 1976 when we moved from Bay City, Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama. Bay City had been a magical little haven for me, a place where Kmart was a pathway to all the right clothes — my faves being a…
