Welcome back!
Your entire face is a sight to behold, and it’s absolutely beautiful, but being with you — or any other person, outside of one’s own home — remains as awkward as when your 10th-grade son decided he desperately wanted to get his septum pierced, then proceeded to scream so dramatically from the piercing chair that security was called, even though the sales associate, Devin (who, by the way, has lots to share on cryptocurrency, freedom of speech, and Bennifer, take two), hadn’t actually pierced anything yet.
With all that in mind, please take the short quiz below from the comfort and safety of your kitchen table. Are you ready to re-enter society during this roaring, not totally virulent summer?
1. Grocery Shopping
Paying for your groceries at Stop & Shop in Orleans involves some difficult choices about how you interact with frontline workers. Your choice is to:
(A) Thank your grocery bagger the Parisian way — a kiss to each of her rosy cheeks.
(B) Elbow bump the plastic partition between you and your cashier. Then wink.
(C) Proceed to self-checkout. Your friendly cashier hasn’t sat down in 19 days.
2. The Library
You desperately miss visiting the Wellfleet library over your two-week vacation (that you were ecstatic to book back in November and paid for out the wazoo). Murphy’s law says the library will reopen its doors just hours after you’ve returned home to your 300-square-foot basement apartment. You:
(A) Write your own book over vacation. Wrap the cover in a wax-paper dust jacket.
(B) Display all the books from the bookshelves of your rental cottage in the yard — what an impressive and nuanced collection! Invite passers-by to check the books out based on a loosely constructed honor system.
(C) On a rainy Sunday morning, park your rental car in the library lot. Invite four friends to join in and park their own rental cars adjacent to yours. Everyone uses a separate mobile device maximizing the free wi-fi for the remainder of the day.
3. A Gallery Stroll
You and your Tinder-swipe-right take a stroll down Commercial Street in Provincetown’s East End. You proceed to:
(A) Bring your own red dot sticker set in case you decide to make your first art purchase. If you don’t make a purchase, you can always place the stickers on works that resonate with you and your date.
(B) Bring your own bottle of champagne and a wheel of brie.
(C) For just the month of July, delete Tinder (Bumble, Hinge, Thursday, Her, Happn, Raya…) and make some eye contact from behind your oversized aviators. You never know!