Missing Being Able to Haunt Local Coffee Shops

I'm sitting here at my desktop in the living room with the TV on CNN in the background and a view out the front window at a sunny, breezy day.  I miss not being able to go out and sit in an Internet-friendly business like Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, drinking a flavored iced coffee while conjuring up within my mind something to write on this blog...home is wonderful, don't get me wrong, but even good old Bilbo Baggins had to get away from his hobbit hole every now and then.  There's a new Dunkin' Donuts within walking distance of my house...they supposedly opened starting March 24th but haven't yet been able to seat anyone because of the coronavirus outbreak, which we're apparently now supposed to call "novel" coronavirus because it's so novel, you see.  It's funny, but since I stopped frequenting these places for coffee and writing I haven't had a single iced coffee...once I drove up to order one through the drive-through at the new Dunkin' (after voting on March 17th), but when I got to the window they informed me that it hadn't opened yet and that it was training employees...

One of my friends who recently retired and has a condo on the Atlantic shoreline had bemoaned the closing of most of Florida's beaches (although some are still open and the governor won't mandate their closure), which happened primarily because of the pictures of young spring breakers pretty much thumbing their collective noses at social distancing guidelines and congregating there en masse.  The problem with reopening them now is that due to school closures these people are in a sense still on "spring break"...I agree with my friend that beaches could work for people who use them in a proper distancing setting, much like within a neighborhood where people still go out walking their dogs or jogging.  But I'm afraid the same elements that caused their closing would return were they to reopen...yes, the selfish spring breakers ruined beaches for us all...

Eventually the infection curve will flatten and both the beaches and coffee shops...along with libraries, schools and so-called "nonessential" businesses...will reopen and do so doubtlessly amid others' outcries that they are placing dollars over lives.  But as I have mentioned before on this blog, this divisive debate is inevitable.  I'm guessing that when these places finally do reopen, they will be invoking similar distancing guidelines to what we see in groceries, limiting the number of customers and keeping them apart.  I don't know what they're going to do with the schools, though...