I took the plunge Sunday.
That doesn’t necessarily mean what it did 43 years ago, when I took the ultimate plunge and got married. But these days, the expression can mean any one of a number of things.
In this case, after five months of talking about it, I finally agreed to take a COVID test.
It wasn’t merely because I had nothing better to do. I took it because someone I’d come in contact with several times over the last month felt sick enough over the weekend to get one. I kind of wanted to avoid the Christmas Rush, so to speak, and get one before I absolutely had to for official “quarantine” purposes, or before I felt too sick to drag myself down to the health center.
As for the first part of the last paragraph, I picked a time to get one — Sunday afternoon from 1-4 p.m. in the tents on Buffum Street in Lynn — when I might as well have waited until the Christmas Rush. It took almost 2 ½ hours from the time I stepped into the line until I walked out of there.
And as for the second, as I write this, I feel fine. The test, as I said, was purely cautionary.
There was more than enough time to make a couple of casual observations.
First, if you’re getting tested for a virus that has killed 160,000 of your fellow Americans, then you’d darn well better put a mask on. I’m proud of my fellow Lynners, because everyone in that line, from little kids on up, wore masks.
Second, the worst part of queueing up for anything is to watch people who try to jump the line. You see this so often at the store when people leave their carts in the line so that they can take another quick run to get the one item they “forgot” to buy. Or perhaps they go into the gas station facing the wrong way rather than wait their turns. Or perhaps you’re waiting for the oncoming traffic to take a left into the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru line only to have two cars coming the other way sneak in there rather than allow you in. Maddening.
In this case, it was, “Can you hold my place in line so I can go off and do whatever?” The people who were asked that question agreed to do it, and I wasn’t about to kick up much of a fuss. It may annoy me, but I won’t be a jerk about it.
But that takes a lot of gall, don’t you think? Everybody there put their afternoons on hold to do this, ostensibly because we value our health, and the health of everyone with whom we’ll come in contact. If I can wait it out in the hot sun, so can you.
However, the line did move slowly. There was someone up ahead rocking a green umbrella, and that was my marker on how quickly things were moving. And that person stayed in my view for at least an hour. Not a good sign.
Like most people who stand in line, I wasn’t always overjoyed at the pace of the line, especially on a hot day when I had forgotten to bring a water bottle. I thought of about a hundred different ways the line could have moved faster, and at the same time also figured that, if it were that easy, then the Lynn Community Health Center would have figured that out and made it happen.
I reached one conclusion: It was Sunday. The LCHC wasn’t working with a full staff. Neither do many other places, though. Right?
As I got closer, I discovered why the line was moving so slowly. As I suspected, there was only one person, who looked like he was wearing a HazMat suit, administering the tests. Every time he finished one test, he had to change his rubber gloves, and the woman helping him had to prepare furtively to make sure everything was sterile.
Moreover, a screening staffer asked copious questions of everyone who was there to be tested, and that information went into a database. You just don’t walk up, get tested and go home. They need your information, not only to tell you the results of your test, but presumably for contact-tracing purposes should it come to that.
Let’s also understand that the LCHC is offering this “Stop the Spread” campaign as a public service. The tests are free of charge. Our gratitude for this should know no bounds.
Well, finally, after those 2 ½ hours, I put my feet in the little footprints circle on the ground, Mr. HazMat came up to me, gave me a bag with masks and hand sanitizer, and stuck the long swab up my nose and counted to 10. He moved it around to the point where I had all I could do to keep from sneezing.
I’d heard all sorts of nasty things about this test, and after having it, I can honestly say some of it is grossly exaggerated. It’s no different than being tested for the flu.
My friend ended up testing negative. Now I’m just waiting for my results.
