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.