Neighborhood BBQ

        Mrs. Reed did not like social gatherings like this one. Especially after the covid-19 outbreak, she felt uneasy about her health. She was only seventy-five years old and had been through her share of cookouts over the years. However, the world was much different after those years of isolation and fear of catching covid-19.  She knew deep down that this cookout would not hurt, and if she did catch anything, it did not matter. She had been on the safe side when she had brought her food item for the cookout, she had carefully thought about the risks of her cooking and the advantages of pre-made food. The best course of action was to buy a large Costco salad and open it at the cookout; that way, she was not risking her health or anyone else’s with homemade cooking.

          She was not a fan of Costco salads and knew deep down that it was cheap of her to do this. However, the pandemic had changed everything. She stared at the odd assortments of food items on the picket table and grimaced. A few of the inedible items on the table were homemade, she thought with disgust. She also saw three other Costco salads. She let out a sigh and searched the group of awkward-looking people for her close friend Mary who had lived in the neighborhood for twenty years.

                Most of the people at the cookout were strangers to her. People behaved so oddly since the pandemic, as she noticed every time she went out to the store, church, or community center. No one felt comfortable casually striking up conversations with strangers, and it was like people had ingrained social distancing practices into their daily lives. She worried daily about the fate of the next generation, that always seemed plugged into their smartphones and earbuds in a completely indifferent way.

           She found young parents irritating. She had seen a whole family sitting down together, and each member was plugged into their smartphones. She wondered sometimes if she had been so removed from her family when she was young, no, she doubted it.  Everything had changed so much over the years since she was young. But some things never changed at all and she could trust those instinctive drives for good or evil.

                She made her way through the crowd and stood next to her friend Mary who was carefully watching Bill. She did not like Bill; he was one of the new neighbors he had only lived in the house for two years now. Unlike the others, he was single and over sixty-five years old. He did not seem to have any family and kept to himself. This made Mary suspicious of him, why would he need a big old house like that to live alone?

                There were other elderly people in the neighborhood, but most of them had lived over twenty years here. Many had retired and sold their homes to move into senior villages in Arizona. The new neighbors were young families who wanted large homes to raise their children in. Bill was the odd one out, and they could not figure out why he wanted to live here.