Love in the Time of Corona #1

He was calling from his car. In the background, I could hear rain and traffic and engine noise. In the foreground, I heard terror gushing like a firehose.

The YMCA where I work is closing down to our members. A mass email had just announced that we were being converted to a child care center for the health care workers who are staffing our hospitals during the pandemic. My young colleague at the front desk, a handsome high school senior with chiseled features, a golden heart, and a glass jaw answered the call, then turned, wide-eyed and silently extended the phone to me.
“Hi, this is Bob. How can I help?”
“Let me just explain to you fuckers what you’ve done. You've killed me. I have a heart condition. My life depends on being able to get exercise every day. If I don’t exercise, I will die. Now I get this email telling me the family membership I’m paying almost a hundred dollars a month for... that nobody else in my family uses... that we only got so my son could play soccer which I’m sure will be cancelled anyway. You realize, right, that all these kids they are sending home, they can carry the virus for 14 days before they show symptoms? Right? Closing these schools has just guaranteed that their parents will all get it. And now you’re telling me I can’t use the membership I’m paying for? I want to cancel. This email is a fucking death sentence for me. You get that, right?”
I’ve spent hours training on process and procedure. Listening skills. Customer service. Learning the right thing to say to get and keep customers for everything from store fixture manufacturers to theatre companies. I’ve performed for crowds of thousands of people who laughed and cried with me. I’ve studied the scriptures, helped lead congregations, fallen in love with church communities, and had my heart and mind broken by them. I’ve read psychology books, sat for years on head-shrinkers couches, and given speech after speech about the wonderful history and culture of the YMCA. 
None of those things prepared me for this phone call.
Or maybe, all of them did.
“I can hear how angry and frustrated you are feeling. I want to make sure you understand that we are keeping one branch in the city open so people can work out...”
“Yeah, in the hood. So I can die by not exercising, or I can die walking in the shittiest part of town to workout in a place I’ve never been before.”

Now, I’ve heard this sort of thing from time to time. It usually comes from people who don’t like my neighborhood, (which is actually much closer to the shittiest part of town, if I’m honest about it,) and are nervous about the fact that the branch where I work is located beside railroad tracks, down the street from a major drug rehab center, and across the road from a homeless men’s shelter, near a street that the locals still call “Crack Alley.” I’m not used to hearing people say they are furious because they aren’t allowed to come up to the ‘hood.
“All of this is such bullshit. There is only one person in Lexington with the virus. It’s all politics. They are fucking with us and killing me. I had a blood clot that almost killed me. I will die without that elliptical machine, goddamit.”
Now, I do make an effort not to play the cancer card at every opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, I’’ve milked that old cow dry more than a few times. But it’s a little game I play with myself: How long can I go without telling someone I had cancer. It’s like my secret super-hero identity. I call him “The Amazing Cancer Boy.” Something told me it was time to pull on the tights and cape.
“You know what? What you’re saying makes absolute sense to me. I am a cancer survivor. I don’t know how I would have lived this long without the Y.”
“EXACTLY! People don’t understand how important this shit is to our sanity. I almost died, man!”
“I feel you, brother. After two months of radiation treatments and chemo, I threw a clot, saddle embolism.”
“THAT’S WHAT I HAD! The fucking widow maker."
“That’s why my doc called it, right! So you know what I’m saying. I would have lost my mind if I hadn’t found the Y 10 years ago. I think the most important thing for us to do right now is to find you a place where you feel comfortable working out. Do you agree?”
“Yeah, but... Everything is closed.”
“Listen, Planet Fitness is still open. I had a membership there for a while. It’s clean. Friendly people. Good equipment. Now, look. It’s not the Y. But for 10 or 20 bucks a month, you can have a place to work out until this corona thing blows over.”
“I don’t even know where... Where are they?”
“There’s one right around the corner, right next to Krogers on New Circle Road.”
“Man, that’s all the way across town.”
OK, something isn't right about this. Kroger is emphatically not all the way across town. It is 5 minutes away at rush hour.
“Brother, which Y branch do you use?”
“I can’t drive all the way over there. I am literally 3 minutes from the Beaumont Y. That’s why I called you!”
Dude dialed the wrong number. He thought he was calling the big, beautiful Y on the south end of town. The one with three swimming pools and thousands of members and a whole studio dedicated to martial arts. The Beaumont Y is bigger than many shopping malls. He thinks he’s complaining to the president of General Motors, and he’s got a clerk from the local bike shop on the phone.
“OK, first things first. It sounds like you’re driving, right? There’s a Planet Fitness on Nicholasville Road. Get over there and get a membership. I don’t want you to cancel your Y membership. I want you to call Beaumont on Monday and have them put it on hold for four months for you. Surely to god, this will all be wrung out by July. You can reactivate your membership anytime before them, and your boy can keep playing soccer. Listen, man. It’s gonna be OK. Get in that gym. Your family needs you, OK?”
“OK, that’s a good idea. I’ll do that, then.”
“You be careful, man. We’re gonna get through this.” 
Love in the time of corona is a complicated business. Things aren’t always what they first appear. Sometimes, a package of toilet paper is really a life preserver. A doorknob can turn out to be patient zero. For me, an entitled, bigoted bully turned out to be a man so afraid of dying that he had to go out in the rain and make an angry phone call from his car so his wife and kids couldn’t see the terror in his eyes. 
I just realized. I never even asked his name. I don’t think it matters.
And I can’t help wondering... Why in hell did that guy call my branch? How did his voice wind up in my ear? Reason tells me it was just a coincidence that out of all the bright faced, part-time  staffers in the city that he could have reached on a Saturday afternoon, he managed to get on the phone with an old guy at the wrong branch who had survived exactly the same life-threatening condition that he had. It’s ridiculous to infer some kind of providence that put me right there at the desk at that moment instead of washing towels, disinfecting exercise machines, meeting personal training clients, or guarding the pool as I had been doing for 98% of my day until that moment. It is absurd to think that in the middle of a plague, God busies himself routing customer service calls.
But in my absurd, ridiculous, irrational heart, I can’t help but take comfort from the thought...
His eye really is on the sparrow. Even in the time of corona.