The scene is Costco. On a holiday. People don’t realize it’s open so there’s lots empty spaces in the parking lot and plenty of room in the aisles.

It won’t last long. It’s hot. People are bored. Having nothing else really to do It’s just a matter of time before they show up.

The majority of the people inside are still wearing masks. It feels safe when you see that now.

A large man, at least a half a foot taller than me, comes walking towards us in the aisle. He’s on his phone and he looks upset.

“Yeah, so we’re at Mr. Mike’s last night, and we’re just getting some burgers. It takes 45 minutes for the burgers.” He’s very mad about this. He repeats the number, I guess the lucky person on the call didn’t hear properly, “45. Yeah, 45.”

He continues his rant as we pass by and I can no longer hear his tale of woe and oppression. It seemed to involve him trying to passionately explain to some serving staff how not OK this was. From his version of events the other person wasn’t capable of understanding the severity of this number 45.

When the pandemic started people got in trouble for saying Nature is healing. Here, in what appears to be a short resting blip of some longer timeline of isolation and loneliness, is a noticeable increase in pre-pandemic normalcy. A return to the every day treating-each-other-like-shit we’ve all seen before and probably done nothing about.

Society is healing.