Hey Dan Patrick, my parents aren’t willing to die from coronavirus to save Starbucks
These phones calls are never easy, mostly because a phone conversation with my parents often requires yelling over the Fox News Channel, and now I have to tell my mom and dad, “You need to die now.”
Doesn’t matter if Ann and Ted don’t like it. That’s not my problem.
My problem is that I want back inside Starbucks to order my grande, two-pump, 103-degree, half-skim, raw sugar, latte thingy.
My iPhone screen is cracked, and I can’t even get into the Apple store to buy the new upgraded device to connect to people I don’t like.
And I am just so over this curb-side pickup from my favorite restaurant.
This is all ... just impossible.
According to Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the holdup to me having all of these necessities again is risking my parents. He told Tucker Carlson of Fox News that people like my parents should be willing to take the sacrifice of potentially dying to open up our U.S. economy.
I called my parents, who have been married for more than 50 years, to ask if they are OK with dying so I can get my coffee.
Don’t judge. I was nice how I phrased it: “Mom, will you please die so I can go back to Starbucks?”
I added “I love you,” and it still didn’t go well.
“Am I alright with that? No absolutely not,” said my mother, Ann, who is 81, from their home in Indianapolis. “I am not ready to give up my life so everybody can go back to Starbucks.”
So mom is a hard no. Like any kid, the trick is to get one of them to say yes. Then I have a chance, and can turn them on the other.
“Come again?” my father, Ted, asked when I posed the question. “Hang on. I have to get out of the kitchen. Your mom is making noise and I can’t hear you.”
Ted is 87, and a retired executive with a major national grocery chain. He also holds an MBA from Cornell, and an undergrad degree from that Ivy League school.
If anyone is going to understand Patrick’s point, and the need to be open for business at the risk of his own health, it’s this man. Dad gets it. He’ll say yes.
“Am I willing to die for that,” dad asks. “No.”
And they call themselves The Greatest Generation.
“The old people have experience and knowledge that young people could use if they would just listen,” my mom told me.
Typically this is where I hear about the importance of taking Vitamin C.
“The young people don’t want to hear what old people have lived through,” she said. “Some have lived through The Depression. I talked to a girl in New Jersey and our friends in Florida, and we’re not unhappy with this situation. We know we have to stay in.
“So, no, I am not ready to [take Patrick’s advice], not under any circumstance.”
My dad was born and raised in New York City, in The Depression. He lived through the mandated blackouts and rationing during World War II.
“Son,” he said. (Not good. Whenever Dad says, “Son” everyone should listen.) “The comparable thing I lived through were the childhood diseases,” he said. “Diseases like whooping cough, Scarlet Fever, measles, and then Polio.”
Oh ... so diseases that are eradicated by vaccinations? You mean those?
“In the summer, most parents would not let their kids to go swimming pools,” he said. “They kept us away from crowds.”
They’re not going for it. They have lived for so long, endured too much, that they see Patrick’s attempt for what it is, political conjecture.
The only way I might entice them to re-think their selfish, stubborn stance is to give them a $2 off coupon for their fried chicken place.
And if these people aren’t going for it, Dan Patrick needs to just move on. Ann and Ted were his best shot.
“I have too much to do,” mom said, “which is I have to get all of this stuff out of the house so you don’t have to do it when I’m dead.”
Please keep them alive for another 50 years.
This story was originally published March 24, 2020 at 7:23 PM.
