Will that be one marshmallow or two?

A teacher puts a marshmallow on the desk of every student in her classroom. She then tells them that she is going to leave the room for 30 minutes. She tells them that they have a choice of eating the marshmallow while she was away or waiting until she returns. She promises that every student that can wait until she gets back, will be rewarded with a second marshmallow. As you may have guessed, a number of the students ate the first marshmallow without waiting for the reward of a second. Several years later, a study of the students in the class, showed that the students who waited for the teachers return, and the second marshmallow, were the more successful in their eventual professions. The moral of the story could be – patience pays off in the long run….. But does it?

The Covid-19 pandemic is an extreme reverse twist on the marshmallow story. COVID-19 strikes most dramatically at the older and often weaker members of our population. It attacks this “classroom” of people who have statistically less time to ponder the payback of the longer term reward – the second marshmallow. Some people, especially the young, might say most of the people in this group really only have one marshmallow left – so why not eat it while they can.

This irony of the pandemic is that the young and healthy “classroom” of people in this world are also being asked to forgo their one marshmallow now in favour of getting two down the road. This should not be taken lightly. This group is often more energetic and dynamic than the elderly. They are not known for their patience. And why should they be? This group has jobs to go to, houses to buy, rent to pay, kids to put through school. This groups “classroom” is more likely to believe that there are lots of marshmallows left in their lives and that, when you run out of marshmallows, you simply go and buy another bag. How can we ask this group to be patient?

We have never thought as much about how we meet and keep friends as we have since the appearance of COVID-19. We are a couple in our seventies and as such we are among the most vulnerable sector to the deadly aspects of the disease. Like it or not, feel it or not, we are in the older “classroom”. Perhaps because we are in relatively good health (for our age), we still feel we have more marshmallows left in our future. And so it is that my partner and I wear masks and infrequently go into retail stores, restaurants, and grocery stores. When we do, we watch for signs of proper distancing and mask wearing and safe sanitizing practices.  We still believe we have enough time to wait for the second marshmallow – but do we?

Early in the pandemic, we read that dining inside is one of the more dangerous things you can do. With that as our guide, despite having friends in the industry and living above a restaurant, we chose to order take-out on all but two very special occasions. Despite all the safeguards by the shop keepers and restaurant owners, shopping and eating has us worried the whole time we are inside a public space. We worry to the extent it takes most of the pleasure out of what should otherwise be, a nice experience.

While we are cautious, we have watched many people, even those in our age group classroom, continue to go about their lives with less concern. It seems that Covid-19 is asking all of us to choose between having one marshmallow now or waiting and perhaps having two next year. The request to wait is far more cruel and demoralizing on the younger classroom and on those in our older age group classroom who may have underlying conditions.

Pre-Covid, we had friends that we caught up with for lunches or dinners, others we would see in social and arts type occasions, and still others we would join at sports venues like the golf course. Looking back pre COVID-19, we saw close friends, relatives, and a variety of people at various times and when we did, it was as easy as a phone call to arrange a get together. Now, layered on top of these social relationships comes our friends perceived adherence, or lack thereof, to COVID protocols. Because of being in the riskiest group, we feel it’s our personal responsibility to lean toward those that appear to adhere to distancing and wearing masks (the two marshmallow group). But who are we to judge? When someone bends or breaks the rules the question becomes…do we take them off your list, or do we look past their choices? After all they are nice people, and especially in our region, they are probably not taking too big of a risk. Who are we to judge them on their choice of how they decide if they want one marshmallow or two?

Keeping friends during COVID is complicated. You read about terms like your “bubble” group and your “Steady20” group. Each Covid colour phase has all kinds of terms that are ambiguous about who to be with and who to somehow exclude from our daily life. Anyone who has tried to do this has found that is just isn’t that easy.

And so it is that we look forward to a day without so many Covid-19 restrictions.

When that happens, we are going to go out and find the biggest bag of marshmallows we can buy! We are going to invite as many of you as we can (from all classrooms) over to our deck to collect that second marshmallow.

Oh, and maybe we can offer you a glass of wine to wash it down.

Happy holidays —