Introverts Quietly Alarmed at Prospect of Returning to Normality Sooner than Anticipated

Lockdown 2: the return of re-watching the entirety of Netflix’s library is officially upon us. Near-empty streets, take-aways, and quiet-night-ins are the order of the day, every day, for the next month at least.

For many, this comes as yet another shit cherry on top of an already inedible Black Forest gateau baked out of spite by your least favourite relative; a further but familiar entry in the series of physical, mental, and spiritual beatings that 2020 has been magnanimous enough to dole out.

For the introvert, however, the news of lockdown is met with the same warmth and eagerness as when greeting a secret lover, the taboo affair of which they can now indulge in shamelessly. The sweet and secret rendezvous of locking yourself in your room with nobody else but you, yourself, and yours alone. Oh, sweet state-enforced social isolation, how you’ve been achingly missed. No more filthy, nasty, contagious human interaction.

That was until the news broke that scientists have produced a vaccine that’s apparently more than 90 percent effective at preventing Covid. Those selfish, life-saving bastards. Did they not once stop to think of the shy-until-you-get-to-know-us type; the cripplingly anxious phone-caller; and, who could forget, the perennially unlucky customer, who would for example be just too polite to complain when charged £3700 for a burger not even worth the £3.70 price advertised and refunded a week later? (Based on true events, trust me).

For these sweet creatures of God’s - or whoever’s - green (for now) Earth, the olive branch of a vaccine is a cruel stick they’ll be beaten with. It means having to fall back into that old, unfulfilling career of bag attendant when everyone else goes out to socially smoke. It means the dreaded return of going to shit parties co-attended by unfamiliar acquaintances where your only friend is a social crutch that breaks during the night, leaving you to scrabble around on the floor of your own social ineptitude. Most horrifyingly, though, it means you’ll have to rediscover whatever public personality you scrabbled together from pop-media references before all of this. Who wouldn’t shudder at the very thought of extending banal politeness towards people you’d rather not talk to and for whom you’d rather not perform an unconvincing act of feigned interest?

We reached out to some introverts for comment, but none of them responded. Typical.

Oh well, at least some of the extroverts will have been killed off because of their contemptible, natural inclination to socialise. Serves them right for giving into their pathetic human instinct.

By Harry McQuaid