If Lorenzo Arellano can know and practice this, the pandejos in your life have no excuse. But the best heroes are those who do the right thing in spite of themselves, learn the errors of their ways while doing so, and then teach others the lessons they learned. My dad remains too prideful and stubborn - too macho - for his own good. Everyone was masked, but he made sure to sit all the way in the back, so he could sit close to an open door. How sad that people won’t get vaccinated.Ī week after his booster, I accompanied my Papi to a funeral. “ Que triste que no se vacunan,” my dad said. I said to continue to wear a mask because breakthrough infections among the vaccinated remain possible - but that the people who seemed to get the sickest remained the unvaccinated. I told my Papi that the booster still wasn’t the end of COVID-19, but it was a step forward. Republicans are favored to win control of Congress as the horror of Jan.
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I took his photo in the waiting room instead, as we counted down 15 minutes to see whether my dad could now download Excel by blinking his eyes.Ĭolumn: Looking back on a plague year and ahead to more political upheaval When someone told me to put away my smartphone when I tried to take a picture of my dad, my Papi said to do it anyway - if a photo could help convince others like my previous write-up on him did, then any hassle we might get was worth it. He ignored the white nurse who tried to flirt with him, instead asking about any potential side effects. He proudly told the person who filled out his vaccination card that he was happy to be there. This time, those of us present knew that vaccines worked and were there to protect not just ourselves, but also others - well, everyone except the Orange County sheriff’s deputy who walked around with her mask below her chin. There was no heavy presence of despair or uncertainty like earlier in the year during the first round of vaccinations. We entered a room filled - but not packed - with Latinos and white people of all ages ready for boosters and first-time visits alike. Then I realized he was confusing it with Omicron. The only question he had this time as we walked in was, why was this disease called Microsoft? I feared he had succumbed to COVID-19 conspiracies in the couple of hours since I had last talked to him. He didn’t sport a Stetson like the last time he got vaccinated, but he did bring me a guiso (stew) of potatoes, serranos and tomatoes to take home. Papi was so ready that he showed up before I did. We had barely sat down outside to wait our turn when someone told us to enter. The crowds still hadn’t formed a couple of days before Christmas, when I accompanied my Papi for his appointment. Not really, they told me, but the hope was that crowds would line up once folks realized Omicron was real. I asked the workers when I went whether people were getting boosted. Then, there were so few people lined up that I was able to obtain mine half an hour earlier than scheduled.
We scheduled his booster shot at the Santa Ana branch of the Social Security Administration, where I had received mine at the beginning of December. I feared Papi would pass away from COVID-19 due to his pandejismo, and would live on in my memories not as the man who taught me the value of hard work, but as the fool who encapsulated these times we live in.Ĭolumn: Don’t be a ‘pandejo.’ Take the pandemic seriouslyĪs the coronavirus raged on, many Latinos scoffed at the pandemic - until it’s too late. It was a miracle of God that Lorenzo Arellano didn’t contract COVID-19. Through most of 2020, he wouldn’t wear a mask, wouldn’t socially distance, and insisted he would never get the COVID-19 vaccination because - pick your corona-conspiracy - the shot contained Bill Gates-created microchips, killed men and wasn’t necessary if you had a positive outlook on life, as he did. As I shared then, he once was the king of pandejos - the Mexican Spanish term for covidiots. Of all the columnas I did this past year, none got more feedback than the one I wrote back in February about how I convinced my Papi to get vaccinated. We all need a hero upon which we can set our 2022 compass. As 2021 ends much like 2020 - rampant economic inequality, political turmoil, hospitals filling up with COVID-19 patients as the pandemic’s reach affects all of us in one way or another - we all need some hope in the upcoming year.
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