W. Curt Vincent
                                Editor

W. Curt Vincent

Editor

My daughter in Upstate New York called this week to give me the weather report there. It was unnecessary, since it is already on my phone — so I knew what they were facing: highs in the 30s, lows approaching zero and not much in the way of sun.

Typical January weather for that area, and the precise reason I no longer live there.

But Saturday’s weather was her main focus of attention, as well it should be.

Try this on for size: high of 9 degree, low of minus-4. A small breeze would easily take frigid to … well, terrible.

Is it any surprise why cabin fever may very well be the No. 1 mental illness trigger in the northeast? Unless, for some reason, you enjoy things like snowmobiling, skiing or ice fishing while your insides start to chill, then winter in the north isn’t for you. Or me.

But while we here in the Carolinas are also mired in winter, we are still getting days in the 50s and nights around 30. Not tropical, for sure, but bearable. I’m choosing to ignore what may come Saturday night and Sunday.

Here’s what’s not bearable … being quarantined because of COVID-19.

That’s where I’ve been for the past few days. Not because I tested positive, thank goodness, but because my granddaughter did last weekend — most likely because she sat next to someone in school who is unvaccinated and ended up being positive. So straight into quarantine we went, her upstairs and me downstairs.

For those five days, neither of us interacted face to face with another significant human being. Despite the fact that I worked from home and she was able to get into her classes virtually, boredom still ran rampant and our four cats became our sounding boards.

They even answered us — though in a language we didn’t dare try to decipher. Much of it sounded like “pet me or else” and “feed me or else.” But I’m merely guessing.

In conveying our misery to my daughter, it quickly became clear that she was not impressed. She said five days hardly compares to what she will face for the next five months. And to put the exclamation point on it all, she said, “you will be at the beach before I even think about putting shorts on.”

She’s not wrong.

Still, these few days have been a challenge that many of us in Scotland County know too well and shows just how important it is to have human contact and interaction. Without it, we are left to our own devices — or worse yet, computers.

Now that I am on the other side of “The Five Days of Isolation” — as well as testing negative with a rapid home test that all but saw a cotton-tipped stick slide through my sinuses and touch my brain — I will renew my efforts to do better with social distancing, wearing a mask and washing my hands. I will also encourage family, friends and anyone else I come into contact with to get their vaccinations and boosters.

Getting a positive test for COVID-19 is bad enough, but if you are armed with the vaccinations and booster, then any potential affects will be far more minimal. The excuses not to do it are many, and yet not a single one contains any common sense.

Of course, I use the very same argument with my daughter when we talk about living in Upstate New York.

W. Curt Vincent can be reached at 910-506-3023 or [email protected].