6. Unforgettable

Some moments stay with you forever.

Weddings. Births. Deaths.

Then, there are moments in history that everyone remembers: December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, a day that will live in infamy. January 28, 1986, was the Challenger explosion. It was a big thing for my generation, as so many kids watched it explode on TV while we were at school. NASA was putting a teacher in space. Then, of course, there was 9/11. And, more recently, November 8, 2016, the night Trump beat Hillary and shocked the world. No one expected that!

Then there was that night, Wednesday, March 11, 2020.

I was a month into Uber driving, and I was hooked. Until that day, it was just a side hustle, a game that brought in a little walking-around money. I picked up passengers before and after work, treating it like an experiment. Everything was going as planned.

And then I picked up the guy who changed everything.

He was heading to Upstate University Hospital to see his wife and newborn. She had given birth the day before. He told me he had gone home just long enough to help his parents put their two-year-old to sleep. Now, he was heading back to spend the night at the hospital.

Still being a rookie Uber driver, I asked the standard boring question: “What do you do for a living?”

I’m working on my Ph.D. in infectious diseases.

This was interesting. I had started enjoying conversations with my passengers. I never expected it, but many of my rides felt like random connections that mattered. Maybe I’d learn something.

So, this COVID thing is an infectious disease, right?

I had heard about it a month earlier in Vegas. Cruise ships were being quarantined. He said yes but said he didn’t specifically study that disease. We both laughed a little about our friends who overused hand sanitizer. Sure, people were getting sick, but we wouldn’t shut down like China, right? They wouldn’t do that here.

Then, his tone changed.

You don’t know what happened, do you?

I glanced at him in the mirror. His face was serious.

The NBA shut down.

It didn’t compute. I didn’t understand. Sports don’t just stop. They play through wars, tragedies, and scandals. They shut down for a week after 9/11, but even that was temporary. Sports are a constant.

He told me it was all over the news. A few players tested positive, and then one game was canceled. Then another. Within hours, the league had suspended the season indefinitely.

The ride was short, but before he got out, he looked at me and said it was serious. He also told me that masks would be a better solution than sanitizer. He and his wife were prepared.

After I dropped him off, I turned off the jazz and turned on ESPN Radio. The breaking news hit me like a gut punch: The NBA had shut down. It was real. This was happening.

My next ride was a group of frat boys. I told them the news, but they didn’t believe me either. One guy checked his sports betting app. The games were still listed.

Then things got really strange.

My next ride was to a grocery store. A guy climbed into my car wearing a hazmat suit, head-to-toe white painter coveralls, rubber gloves, goggles, and a mask. He told me his mom was sick. Not with COVID, but with cancer, and he couldn’t take chances. He was stocking up.

After I dropped him off, my next passenger was a woman who had just been inside that same grocery store. She wasn’t wearing a mask, but she told me she had gone to grab a few supplies, you know, just in case.

I dropped her off and turned off the app to call my wife. She hadn’t heard about the NBA or much about COVID at all. She told me to grab milk because the boys might run out before the weekend.

It was maybe 9 p.m., but the grocery store's parking lot was crowded. Inside, it looked like the store had been looted, too. The bread aisle was ransacked. Paper goods? Gone. People weren’t shopping; they were stockpiling. Carts overflowed as shoppers grabbed whatever they could.

They were out of milk.

Within weeks, my company started working from home. Everything temporarily closed, and some places never reopened. I took a month off from Uber. When I finally went back out, the streets were empty.

The world had changed.