We did it before – we'll do it again!

For almost all of us, dealing with the Coronavirus is an unpleasant experience. It’s disrupting our lives and causing much panic and uneasiness.

With God’s help (and a lot of hand washing), the tragic deaths will be minimized.

But eventually, the crisis will be over. Although life will never be quite the same, things will get back to normal. Sometime in the future, we’ll be looking back and remembering exactly how it affected us and our families. And wondering how we got through it.

If you’re old enough, you know what I mean. We’ve lived through a few of these things.

The best example, of course, was 9/11. 

I remember exactly what I was doing when I first heard that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. I was sitting at work, listening to the radio (WRMR 850, the Big Band station) when it was first announced via a very low-key interruption of the music.

At the time, I thought that it was just a Cessna or other small plane that knocked over a radio tower. When the second plane hit, we knew something big was going on. Turning on a TV at work in our customer lounge confirmed it and we finally realized just how big an event it was.

A few hours into the mayhem, just before we were all sent home, I thought I’d better call my parents. The funny thing was, they didn’t have their TV on and were blissfully unaware of what was going on. When I told them what was happening, they weren’t particularly upset – probably because as members of the Greatest Generation, they had lived through a variety of crises (the Depression, World War II, etc.) already.

A few years later, we had the big blackout of 2003. I was at work, about 15 minutes away from going home, when the lights went out and everything went dead. I remember driving down Clifton Boulevard in Cleveland, with all the traffic lights out, and the stores with their doors open so they could get some light into their buildings. The feeling at the time was very similar to 9/11 and we wondered if terrorists were involved. It was hot and uncomfortable too, to add to the uneasiness.

There were other memorable disasters local to Ohio, such as the July 4, 1969 storm, and the Blizzard of 1978. I’ll never forget those either.

The funniest national 'big event' was the Y2K Bug – the fear that all hell was going to break loose when the computer clocks (and our coffee makers, VCRs, etc.) switched over to the year 2000. Nobody knew what was going to happen.

Again, I know exactly where I was at when it all went down at midnight on New Year's Eve 1999: the Jackalope Restaurant in Lorain. 

And that’s what was so funny. Nothing happened. Except that my bill for the night's dinner and entertainment was much more than I expected, and I was briefly in danger of starting a new career as a dish washer.

Anyway, the good news is that we always get through these things. That's the American way. And we all laugh about it later.

I'm counting on it, and looking forward to it.