The Roaring Twenties

[osprey_archer]

I keep seeing posts about how after the pandemic is all over, we’re all going to be afraid to touch each other, but I would like to submit as a counter-exhibit the original Roaring Twenties. In 1918 and 1919, the Spanish flu swept around the world in a pandemic that disproportionately killed young people, and yet within a couple of years those selfsame young people were necking, petting, dancing scandalously to jazz, and just generally touching each other so much that it shocked and horrified their elders, who grew up in the pre-pandemic and pre-World War I days of decorous handholding and “Is it okay to kiss a man before you’re engaged?”

(The answer, based on the number of nineteenth-century novels that deal with this question, appears to be “Technically no, but lots of girls do it.”)

So it’s possible that at the end of all this we’ll all have personal space bubbles the size of giant hamster balls, but it’s also possible that we’re going to emerge in a touch-starved frenzy and suddenly people will start licking each other in the streets.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I think a lot of people are realizing not only how necessary human contact is, but also how many different avenues it usually comes from... because now so many of those avenues are closed off and we're all REALLY noticing.