We should all do time capsules about this whole pandemic thing. As in a steel tube approximately one-foot long with a 4.25-inch diameter buried 20-feet underground, in my case filled with various writings. Oh, and several headshots as I want to be famous in the distant future, like 500 years from now. 500 years is an important delineation – haven’t you noticed what a snooze-fest history earlier than 500 years ago is? I mean who really wants to know about something that happened 418 years ago. The math alone is impossible to do. 

Some of the headshots will be taken at jaunty angles, others will be themed “Hats from Around the World,” and a final set will involve my special pursed-lip pose. Mark your calendar – me famous in 2020 + 500 =_______. In the future someone will be able to do that math so it’s fine to not understand it today.   

But I don’t want to be famous now, not now. Now would be bad as I have several sets of wild accusations submitted from which I’m trying to derive an income. Not extortion or bullying or threats or blackmail or anything actually criminal or damaging. Just wild accusations submitted to whomever in various mediums, i.e. I verbally accused my neighbor Craig of replacing my matte black 2020 Mercedes Benz S-450 4MATIC Sedan with a 2006 Subaru Forester, albeit the L.L. Bean edition. So far Craig’s only response has been “Get out of my yard.” 

So when we make our time capsules don’t think you’re just doing this to meet a requirement or get extra credit or to become involved in arts and crafts (ugh, arts and crafts rooms have a particular smell which I abhor, somewhere between mildew/fabric softener/chamomile tea and old people skin). No, these will have a real impact on the 12-foot tall, no underwear-wearing People of the Future, because when these big-headed giants open up our steel tube they may be concerned they’ll get the virus, but then they’ll realize they won’t because it will be dead. Just like when you open a World War II time capsule you don’t catch Nazism, belief in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, or think discrimination within the military makes sense. 

You probably don’t know how to move forward with your capsule so here’s an example of what I’ll document for today 5.27.2020:

“Hello Space Giants of the Future. Patrick McNerthney here, feel free to grab an autographed headshot from the pile. Today, because of a pandemic where most of the world is forced to stay inside their homes and work (or look for work, the economics of this outbreak are pretty grim) – all while educating their children if they have children – my day involved attempting to work and look for more work while homeschooling my son. 

Specifically, this meant trying not to yell at my kid as he interrupted me with legitimate questions during ‘school,’ trying not to yell at my kid when he told me he was finished with his schoolwork (11 a.m., he started at 9 a.m.), making lunch for the both of us, and forcing him to go on a bike ride to offset his lack of access to recess, sports and other physical activity, particularly in light of the mutually agreed upon two-hour Fortnite gaming time allotted to him each day. 

Then I kept trying to work while he played Fortnite – which, admittedly, involved me yelling at him a lot because he was yelling into his microphone headset at his friends who were also online playing Fortnite, which is ridiculous because the whole point of a microphoned headset is to amplify your voice while experiencing an insulated audial capture of other sound. All of which you know well what with your surgically-implanted-at-birth voice amplifiers and Beats by Dre Powerbeats 3 headphones. 

Two points of clarification – ‘Fortnite’ was a shooting game kids loved in 2020 that was eventually outlawed because it made them clinically insane. ‘Online’ was a relatively new medium where humans connected with each other through a series of transistors in vacuum tubes wired together (thus on – line) and spread across the globe – also eventually outlawed when it became apparent it was entirely controlled by one credit card company. And, ironically, because when combined with a thing called a ‘mobile phone’ it led to the human race losing the ability to verbally communicate with one another face to face in real time. Something that’s probably hard to understand now as you undoubtedly control time with your laser fingers.”   

Ok, maybe I should not be the one doing a time capsule as surely recapping the events of my day will lull our future jet-boot wearing readers into a deep slumber. But you should do one for sure. 

I better go check on my kid.