The Costco Generation
The world is a famine place, a drought place
a war-torn place, a place we have made over
into a place of hunger and displacement. We
watch it all on TV, keep up as best we can. We
try to stay out of it all, very easily we look away
change the channel, fix a snack, reassure our-
selves. There’s nothing wrong with us. We are
the Costco generation, the Walmart generation
the all you can eat generation. We shop our fill
through aisles and aisles stacked to the ceiling
giant sized, jumbo sized, larger portions of all
we need or might need. We fear running out, so
we fill our cupboards and freezer and look for
the best deal, look for the best deal. We are ex-
ceptionalism in action, being exceptional and
living in it, acting it out. While the rest of them
seem to get it all wrong, stay homeless and stay
hungry, have wars playing out within their borders.
We, on the other hand, make war elsewhere and
send the weapons to fight in them. We complain
about the homeless and spend fortunes on diets
so we can look the part and live for almost for-
ever. We fill out the surveys, write online reviews,
spend countless hours on social media trying to
keep up enough to respond. This is the Costco
generation, warehouses full of all the things that
define us, make us over – leave us like this.
Terrorizing
We’re learning about terrorism from
the best of ’em, the worst of ‘em
Isis, Hezbollah, and Hamas, the better
known groups, and those smaller ones
and individuals who often claim
responsibility for some attack, explosion
or the assassination of some political figure
anything to get to be part of the news on
our various news networks, claim it and
get the fame, the recognition they need in
the terrorist game. We watch it go on
24 hours a day, yesterday, last night, this morning.
It’s like an out of control weed, a pandemic,
a bit of climate change that is drying us out
leaving us the shell of our former selves.
Now we have become students of death, in its
various forms, destruction for its own sake.
We’ve become helpless talking heads that
are watching the world come apart, and we
are terrorizing ourselves with it.
Modern Medicine
Check-In and Check-Out for
Interventional Pain Medicine
shares a waiting room with
the Check-In and Check-Out
for Endocrinology and Bone
Density Scan, so there’s sort
of a crowd checking-in or out
most of the day. This is a quiet
crowd, mostly older folks who
probably know what’s coming.
The diabetics cluster around one
end of the room, while the rest
spread out, some alone and some
have a driver along, the pain meds
they get numb up a knee or hip
or other joint making their drive
home a bit of a problem. This is
contemporary medicine with an
assortment of cheerful nurses and
aids and over-serious receptionists
near a sign reminding us not to harm
health care works – it’s a crime to
hit or spit on them or even threaten
them – this is modern medicine and
modern patients are ready to take each
other on – this is the waiting room.
J.K. Durick is a retired teacher, taught for years at Trinity College of Vermont and after that for many years at the Community College of Vermont. He and a friend started following the pandemic by writing a poem for every day – we now have run out of pandemic and have written 1618 and plan to continue till we run out.