Meet Urna

Wanted to write a story. Story about a person (we’ll make her Female just because I’m the one telling the story) so a female person named Urna (that's an androgynous enough nondescript name).

Urna lives in a bubble. Constantly hibernating and spending countless hours indoors - watching movies, writing, working, being. And this hibernation would continue for countless periods of time. There was hardly if ever any coming and going of any person that was not Urna. She would seldom let artisans (electricians, plumbers, handymen) in her flat, even if they did she would let one person come in at a time, always taking off their shoes first. The only constant visitor was her cleaning lady and that was as infrequent as possible. She hardly ever had any visitors, male or female, or entertained friends or family. She was by all intents, a soloist. 

The kids in the neighborhood, her neighbors rarely saw Urna. They would only sight her on the way to the grocery store, on her way to work or church. Urna looked to be alone. And they thought that was sad. She spent so much time indoors. When she did go out, she would be seen wearing gloves, so as not to touch anything with her bare hands, and it would irk her so when folks would touch her groceries or any of her personal items, purse or the other, with their bare hands. She would politely ask that they wear gloves if they were to rifle through her things but they would consider this request quite absurd, a bold affront to their personal hygiene. 

It was not certain if Urna really had much use for people. She always stood a feet apart from everyone, not letting them stand too close or bump into her. She hated large crowds such as existed at parties, frou-frou weddings and unnecessary occasions and the foot or vehicle traffic. To manage this, she would intentionally go out on the quiet calm days, Sunday mornings preferably, when everyone was safely tucked away in church. On the occasions when she did go to church she would scour the hall to find a seat in the emptiest of pews, just so she could sit by herself for the Mass, and as the Mass occurred she would seemingly wonder why everyone chose to hug and shake hands enthusiastically at Mass instead of observing the pensive repose of worship. What was even odder is she knew some of these people didn’t particularly care for each other so why bother with the effusive greetings. After Mass, she would observe quiet moments of prayer and then, walk in a bee line straight to her car to make her onward journey back home. Not stopping to greet, hug or embrace any of the other parishioners. 

Professionally, Urna also longed to work fewer days in the office. She had asked her boss several times if her presence in the office was absolutely needed considering that she could do most of her work in the comfort of her home. Her boss vehemently declined, so much so that he even insisted that she not only be present at work every day but also arrive on time, 8am, considering any time thereafter as “late” and inexcusable.

Urna often found herself miserable in the office. It’s open office plan and confined seating arrangement which they thought was on "trend" and "modern" she found very limiting and constrictive. It would have about 40 employees seated side by side to each other sharing the same air space, unable to maintain at least a meter distance from the other. This made her very uncomfortable and inexplicably, violated. She could hear her work colleagues wheezing, sipping and chewing, thus signifying the proximity of their desks. She called the office environment “human sardines in a can.” To top it off, they would spend the first couple of hours of every work day hugging and greeting each other such as in church, except this time, they had just seen each other the day prior. 

Urna abhorred these social platitudes and often spoke against it. This caused her to be termed a “social pariah” and caused people at work to dislike her and consider her a wrong “fit” to their office camaraderie. At home, her reception was the same, the neighborhood thought she was simply “weird”. The gloves, the insistence to sit at home for hours on end, the frequent visits to the grocery store. Very antisocial, she had heard her neighbors whisper about her. One time they even saw her waiting outside for the grocery store to be a little emptier before she could walk in, creepy. 

As humans, we were made to bump, collide and intrude on each other’s spaces. We were made to reach out and hug and embrace each other warmly at every instance, church, work, grocery stores whether required or not. Urna did not appreciate or see the value in this, neither could she find satisfaction in it. If they chose to term her socially awkward so be it, she intended to maintain a certain level of social distance between her and the world, otherwise her personal space would be pierced and, ultimately, violated. 

And so Urna lived until the unprecedented events of COVID19 in 2020. 

_____

Set in 2018. This is socially distanced behavior in existence in 2018.  

Urna practiced socially distance behavior in 2018. While the rest of the world considered her awkward, wrong “fit”,  antisocial, too nit-picky, boujée, strange, she was simply maintaining her "social distancing from society's intent gaze." 

2020. This is now our new normal. A new normal some have embraced and fully celebrated. While others struggle to grasp life without human collision. Was she ahead of her time? Did she foresee the values of maintaining some measure of personal space? Are any of these socially distance practices going to survive the post-COVID world? Do you have any socially distance practices you observed before this hullabaloo that is now common practice in the face of COVID19?