What is the right amount of eye contact and other skills I’ll need to relearn post-Covid

I realised yesterday that I have crossed the road three times in the past week to avoid talking to people I know. Not out of any great fear of giving our getting infected (I live in a very small bubble and infection rates are low here) or because I wasn’t particularly fond of the people I was going out of my way to avoid. You’d think I’d be thrilled to speak to someone who I don’t wake up next to every morning and isn’t accustomed to my every bowel movement. And in my head, I would be, but the reality, as it turns out, is very different.

It’s not that I secretly don’t want to get out of lockdown, I definitely, definitely do. I avoided them for mundane reasons – I was hungry and wanted to get home from dinner, I didn’t feel like a chat, I was already exhausted from the thirty-second social interaction I had with the girl on the till. But I can’t deny it, it’s definitely a trend.

We might crave people and fun and crowds and liveliness, but we are also now completely unaccustomed to it. We want it so desperately and yet it requires an exhausting amount of effort and, let’s face it, awkwardness. We’re so rusty, we’re tempted to just continue rusting instead of cracking out the oil can.

In light of my own waning social skills, here’s what else I’ll have to start relearning once we get out of this pandemic.

Bowling

This isn’t to say I was a regular bowler pre-Covid, I’d say my 11th birthday was the last time I stepped foot in a bowling alley. But now just the thought of it turns my stomach. Stepping into shoes that some stranger recently sweated in, sticking my fingers in a ball that’s risen up from God know’s where and last touched by God knows who, probably by the nosepicker on alley 7. And then eating finger food?! Kill me now.

Side note: In my long-time languishing, I rewatched New Girl (along with many others) and have a newfound appreciation for Schmidt and his completely valid abhorrence for bathtubs, they are “medieval filth cauldrons”.

Commuting

Not just to work, but I really hope that doesn’t get reinstated. Just the experience of travelling anywhere, of moving from point A to point B across an extended period of time. What do I do during that time? How do I know how long the bus journey will take me, if I need to be somewhere at 10am, what time should I leave? And I think Covid might have converted me from a “45 minutes is plenty of time in the airport” to a two-hour terminal shopper.