VERNON, Conn.

Every family should have at least one hypochondriac. Ours was an uncle who washed his hands multiple times before and after meals. He was fastidious about his silverware, examining it minutely for water stains and polishing it at table with his napkin, much to the annoyance of my mother, even thought the silverware was as spotless as a saint.

One Christmas, the dining room table crowded with family and friends, my mother, attempting to extract a roast from the oven, brushed her hand on the pan, yelped, and dropped the roast to the floor. It spun around like a top and came to a rest touching the radiator, which was not spotless. She shot me daggers and said in a pained whisper full of menace, “DON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS!”

I immediately fell in with her subterfuge. The roast was cleaned of a dust rat, purified, and bought to the table with no one the wiser. I remember wondering at the time how long the prohibition was to last, for I was yearning immediately to tell my brother and sister about the mishap, but only after the multitude had been fed. These things were meant to be shared with others. What a burden! I watched the uncle devour the meat and wondered whether he would drop dead at table or in the bathroom, after cleaning his hands for the fourth time.

The uncle died relatively young, despite the fact that most members of the family lived into deep codgerdom.

My grandfather on my mother’s side died at ninety-something, full of years, grappa and Toscano cigars, which he smoked Ammezzato.

A few years before he passed on, he had sucker-punched a younger man in the pub he used to frequent because the ill-mannered stranger had insulted a Polish friend of his while the two were playing at cards. The local police brought the unconscious stranger to the border of the town and advised him, when he woke from his nap, that should he return to town – ever – he would be arrested .

When the hypochondriac uncle passed away, my mother whispered decorously to me, “Guess the germs finally got him,” adding, “DON’T TELL ANYONE I SAID THAT!”

The uncle was an expert fisherman, and for years I wondered how he could bear to hook worms on his line, until my father told me he only used dry flies, beautiful, fetching, hand-crafted flies. Even so, he had to unhook the fish and drop it into his often-washed wicker basket, which he wore on his waist, like a gunslinger.

This fastidious uncle would have survived in good order the grosser inconveniences of Coronavirus – no hugging, no handshakes, washing hands frequently after touching polluted surfaces, especially plastic, where the deadly virus remains in attack mode for nearly a day, conversing at a safe distance, avoiding crowds, wearing facemasks, telecommuning with a doctor every time the hairs on the back of his neck prick up in fright, usually after listening to some doomsday-physician on 24/7 Coronavirus coverage networks – because he regarded his immediate environment as a familiar septic system of fatal germs.

To wake each morning was to be alert, focused on the micro-microcosm, to be always on one’s guard, rubbing the plate off the silverware.

To a certain extent, Coronavirus has made cowards of us all – also, hypochondriacs of us all. Normalcy, and the economy, too, have fled the pandemic, screeching and screaming. It will not return, the experts tell us, until the dragon has been slain. And, like a cat, the dragon has nine lives. The choices that lie before many of us now appear to be poverty or death. And, as Yogi Berra might have said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

Will we survive? Of course we will. But sociability will have received a blow to the solar plexus, and all of us will be unduly cautious, if not afflicted with hypochondria. In our distress, important distinctions will be lost.

Connecticut has just purchased an entire warehouse of what are called personal protective equipment (PPEs) to protect medical workers from Coronavirus, from Chinese Communists who were principally responsible for transporting Coronavirus from Wuhan to Western Europe. No medical gear has yet been found to protect medical workers from politicians.

If China were Big Pharma some ranter on the left by now would have accused Chinese banking magnates of producing a plague so that they might sell medical gowns and facemasks to credulous Nutmeggers in Connecticut. Shrewd Yankees in Connecticut were called Nutmeggers because they used to put wooden nutmegs in with their produce to gain extra coin from their purchasers. Clever Yankees!

Time is a stream, and no one steps in the same stream twice. Things change. We used to be able to depend on our politicians to steer us in the direction of beneficial change. We are just now emerging – one prays -- from the very first intentionally caused national recession in U.S. history.

When the Coronavirus plague has subsided, the question to which we should demand an honest and unambiguous – i.e. non-political -- answer is this: Have our politicians, assisted by medical “experts” and data-manipulators, been selling us a load of wooden nutmegs?

Don Pesci is Vernon-based columnist.

Don Pesci: A hypochondriac uncle and credulous Nutmeggers