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I’m Black, Gen X, and Built for Social Distancing
Why the big fuss over quarantine?
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Cardi B nailed it: Shit is getting real with coronavirus. As the pandemic has caused American public schools to shut down, triggered nationwide anxiety, and made toilet paper scarce (?!) in supermarkets around the country, we the people started warming up to the idea of self-isolation.
Bingeing shows on our favorite streaming services while burning through quarantine snacks too quickly became a collective coping experience. But in the midst of all the unprecedented madness that COVID-19 has popped off, Generation X is less bothered compared to millennials and, okay, boomers.
The possible reason takes me back to my own childhood as a latchkey kid. As a tweener, I outgrew my after-school babysitter at the same time my mom was set to give birth to one little brother (1979) after another (1981).
Since she was home with the baby bros, I ate Campbell’s soup and Devil Dog snacks at my own kitchen table for lunch hour on school days, and made it back home again by 3:00 p.m. after school — just in time for Adam West’s Batman or Battle of the Planets cartoons. But in another two years’ time, my mom…
