Coronavirus in Connecticut

Randall Beach: Can it get any weirder amid the COVID?

There’s no let-up in the strangeness of our times. And this leads to strange behavior, quirky goings-on.

In Hamden, people who are going nuts sitting inside are not content to stroll on the sidewalks of their neighborhoods; they’re walking in the middle of the road. I have this on good authority from an eyewitness who asked me not to use her name for fear of “being written up in social media.”

The witness, who lives in the Spring Glen neighborhood of that town, reported to me in an email that she has been complaining to her friends and family about these middle-of-the-roaders for years because she finds them “extremely irritating and dangerous.” She added: “The issue has only gotten worse in this time of the pandemic.”

“There are sidewalks on both sides of most of the streets,” she noted. “Why don’t people use them??? Why do they insist on walking in the street? I have seen people with strollers walking down the middle of the road like they are on a private lane.”

She said it’s not a question of the new social distancing; the sidewalks are not at all crowded. “I have seen people with a dog on a long leash walking down the road. They are blocking the entire road with the long leash.”

“I sometimes come upon an older man running down the middle of the street. He cannot hear my car. One time I stopped my car because he had his head down, running in the middle of the road. He almost ran right into my stopped car. He then got mad at me!”

My correspondent described another such incident: “I was driving up Thornton Street a few weeks ago. A woman was running almost in the middle of the road. I slowed down, I tooted my horn, I then passed her. She was wearing headphones, so she didn’t hear my toot. As I passed (slowly), she started screaming at me.”

And that’s not all: “More than once I have driven up small inclines, on a bend with cars parked on either side of the road and there, just over the crest of the hill was a family of four adults with kids in strollers walking in the middle of the road. I could not see them until I came upon them because of the bend in the road, the parked cars and the hill, yet there they were, strolling down the middle of the road when there were sidewalks on both sides of the street.”

The emailer signed off by saying: “I know I sound crazy but this is a very dangerous situation.”

She’s got that right! As a runner myself, I would never run in the middle of a street that’s in a residential neighborhood. Nor do I ever use headphones while running. You think I want to get killed? And those people with their babies in the strollers are crazy.

Now here comes fresh evidence we live in desperate times: my brother reported that when he had a few friends visit on his back patio, a male guest quietly went off to a corner of the yard and urinated there rather than go inside the house. Apparently it’s now seen as bad form to ask permission to go inside a potentially infected house. So just go ahead and pee in the yard. Maybe nobody’s watching you.

In the rural town of Brooklyn, Conn., according to a dispatch from The Associated Press, a man who was kicked out of a McDonald’s restaurant for not wearing a face mask threw a rock through the window, stole several pairs of “ladies underwear” from a Walmart, then tried to run out of the store but was stopped by a police dog. He was charged with criminal mischief and breach of peace. How about criminal stupidity?

In Van Nuys, Calif., a Target employee who helped to remove two customers refusing to wear masks had his arm broken.

In Perkasie, Fla., a convenience store cashier was punched three times in the face after she told a man refusing to wear a mask that he could not buy a pack of cigars.

In San Antonio, Texas, a man who was told he could not board a public bus without a mask shot a passenger. The victim was hospitalized; the gunman was arrested.

In Flint, Mich., when a security guard at a Family Dollar store insisted that a customer put on a mask, the guard was shot and killed.

In Florida, where health officials are reporting many thousands of new COVID-19 cases daily, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has rejected pleas for a statewide mask order by saying: “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

When President Trump visited a Ford Motor Co. plant and was in an area where face shields and masks were made, he refused to wear a shield or mask. Asked why, he replied: “I don’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”

A couple of weeks later, Trump told a Wall Street Journal reporter that some Americans are wearing face coverings not as a preventive measure but as a way to signal disapproval of him.

Meanwhile, Carol Hefner, co-chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign in Oklahoma, said during a protest over the state’s stores not being allowed to open more quickly that the flat terrain out there should be considered: “We have a lot of wind and the wind has pretty much helped us here.” This was the quote of the day in the New York Times.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick had this to say about why the state should reopen right away: “There are more important things than living.”

Members of Tom Petty’s family and the Rolling Stones have threatened legal action in an effort to stop the Trump campaign from playing their songs at his rallies. In an odd choice, one of the Stones’ songs being featured was: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

Meanwhile, the dating site reports that “as America begins to slowly re-open, people will have to adjust to the new ‘normal.’” The dating service informs us that “85 percent of daters are excited to get back to their normal dating schedule.”

Here are some of the “fun social distancing dates” recommended by the dating site: mini golf, drive-in movies, taking an “adventurous” hike, planting a garden, doing yoga outdoors or watching a livestream of a concert together.

Finally, this is how my Father’s Day began in this weirdest of years: I was jerked upright out of a sound sleep in my East Rock home by a robocall at 6:40 a.m. from the City of New Haven: “Good morning! A large black bear has been sighted in your area. Please be sure to stay inside and do not approach this animal.”

I blame the virus for this creature’s bizarre wanderings.

Contact Randall Beach at 203-865-8139 or