In these times of great stress, I thought it was probably about time that I brought you up to date with the important matters going on in the world. So I bring you news from my bunker somewhere deep beneath the fifth floor of my apartment building. ¶

Of course, as we all know, things have become really quite serious. Only just now, Pinellas County auto-dialed my office phone. Naturally, I wasn’t able to take the call, but the Stetson system helpfully auto-transcribed the content and emailed it to me. Apparently, we’re now under a Stapler at Home order. ¶

Compliance

I’m so relieved to find I’m in compliance. My faithful Rexel Bambi has been with me through thick and thin since 1980. (Well, thin anyway. Bambi is too small to drive staples through thick bundles.) But having Bambi on my home office desk reminds me that, even in these difficult times, some things never change. I can still buy staples that fit. ¶

Mind you, with the way things are going on the Stock Market, maybe I’ll soon be able to buy Staples. Though I don’t know what I’d do if they issued a Staples at Home order. ¶

Terminology

And, let’s face it, they might yet do that. After all, we’ve had to learn a whole new vocabulary with the names of the orders they keep coming up with: Shelter-in-Place, Safer-at-Home, Stand-by-Your-Beds, Any-Which-Way-But-Loose, etc. ¶

And the terms they impose are often quite esoteric. Like Tampa’s edict that no-one should be in a public park unless it’s the Riverwalk or alongside Bayshore Boulevard. Presumably they know something I didn’t: COVID-19 doesn’t like a sea view. ¶

As Nia has pointed out, we’ll soon be under orders not to wink at someone without wearing bifocals. Though, if you’re wearing bifocals, I’m not sure that anyone else would notice you winking. ¶

Shoes

It’s all getting rather personal. And that’s before we consider what people are actually doing while they shelter (with or without their staplers). For example, there seems to be a whole group of women who have each created a home office out of their closets. ¶

I would have guessed that a woman’s closet would be far too full already to become an office. But apparently, in times of stress, the inner Imelda Marcos is hard to resist. As Jessica has pointed out, a girl can never be too close to her shoes. ¶

Enforcement

But what I really want to know is this. How does a Stapler at Home order get enforced? Are we all obliged to download three documents from the web, staple them together, and then take them with us for validation to a Clerk With a Really Big Stapler? Is it simply the old mine’s bigger then yours malarkey? ¶

If so, my poor Bambi is in for rough treatment. A bit like Bambi himself really. Though I didn’t know Walt Disney had a sideline in predicting the future for staplers. ¶

At least the original ended well. But you can’t argue with a Stapler at Home order. ¶