Serpentine! Serpentine!

Today Ohio’s governor Mike DeWine signed a “Stay at Home” order which will begin tomorrow night at 11:59pm. This is the same thing as what has been called “Shelter in Place” in other states – people must only leave their houses to take care of “essential” business, and only essential businesses can keep their doors open. The key exception is that people are allowed to get fresh air and exercise as long as they maintain social distancing.

Now, I’m a big walker. I walk every morning around 6am and when Sam is home I walk at least one more time in the evening. BCV (before coronavirus) I would see the same three people out at 6am – all of them walking their dogs. On evening walks Sam and I would run into maybe two or three other people out walking dogs or getting some fresh air. When we drove to one of the trail heads for a walk in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, there might be half a dozen cars in the parking lot on an early spring day.

This weekend there were people everywhere! We gave up on going to one of the national park trail heads because all of the parking lots were nearly full. Now, there is plenty of space in the National Park for all of these people to maintain social distancing, but Sam and I didn’t feel like joining so large of a crowd. In our little neighborhood park there were also several more people out than usual but fewer than in the big park. On the one hand it makes me very happy to see people exercising (someone said recently that there are a lot of happy dogs out there who have never been walked so much in their lives), but it does make it tricky sometimes to keep the 6 foot distance. If we passed people on the trail, both parties clung to the opposite edges of the trail, or veered off the trail to maintain distance.  This morning when I went to pick up some coffee at Open Door, a couple coming toward me from the opposite direction walked well into the street to avoid coming close to me. I was appreciative of their caution, but worried that they might escape the virus but not the front end of an approaching car.

Tonight I was reading this article in the New York Times which discussed how people can venture out for exercise safely in this time of social distancing. The article emphasized how important it is, especially during this stressful time, to reap the physical and mental benefits of fresh air and exercise, but acknowledged that going for walks in a city like New York has its challenges: “Even on the wider sidewalks of the borough’s main arteries, any attempt to avoid a near-brush with pedestrians passing the other way would require serpentine-style evasive maneuvers typically associated with soldiers dodging gunfire on the battlefield.” 

I may be showing my age here, but seeing the phrase “serpentine-style evasive maneuvers” brought to mind the 1979 movie “The In-Laws.” In the movie, future in-laws Peter Falk (shady CIA-type) and Alan Arkin (mild-mannered dentist) get pulled into a wild adventure that at one point involves dodging gunfire on a South American airstrip. As they are are running toward the safety of a car, Peter Falk yells to Alan Arkin, “Serpentine! Serpentine!” and indicates that Arkin is to zig-zag across the field to avoid the gunfire. 

Here’s the scene:

Watching the clip again, it makes me laugh. We don’t look quite that ridiculous trying to avoid each other out there, and I don’t want to make too light of what is in fact a deadly serious effort to save lives, but in a time when anxiety seems to be the leading emotion, what a relief to be able to release some of that anxiety in laughter.

I hope you had a good weekend! Xoxo