We, the Socially Distanced

Seems like it took a pandemic to make us actually realize how distanced we have become from one another and now everyone’s knickers are in a twist.

But I’ve watched it coming and so have you

Television drove us indoors decades ago. We all let the fireplace grow cold and cozied ourselves around the moving-picture show in our living rooms. TV tables were invented so we could avoid the stress of actual family conversation and eat in silence, like cats watching a mouse-hole.

Next came the marketing ploy by universities that it was no longer enough to earn a degree, it had to be from a prestigious name-brand school, maybe one like theirs, if you got the hint. Harvard, Princeton and M.I.T. suggested that if you wanted a Wall $treet job, your state university might not quite have the caché.

What has a top school to do with social distancing?

Competition. To get there you needed top grades, membership in organizations, sports activities, a place on the school paper and class president wouldn’t h…