By Morf Morford
Tacoma Daily Index
After a year like 2020, everyone, or at least every year, should have Bingo cards. You know, the cards with various possible, or for bonus points, unlikely, even impossible events that earn points if they match the description on your card.
You might have seen these at various birthday parties or wedding showers.
I don’t remember hearing about them before 2020, but we certainly have never had such a bingo-card worthy year.
Consider just some of the unlikely events few, if any, of us would have foreseen in 2020.
The worst pandemic in a century, costing hundreds, then thousands of lives each day, with nary a national policy in sight. Or even, with mounting death tolls, that it is real.
Racism reared its ugly head in our streets, law enforcement and even public policy and statements.
The economic fall-out from both of these systemic events ended up creating the highest unemployment rates in our nation’s history.
But who would have imagined a full year with essentially no “markers” – no baseball season, no big events like fairs, sports seasons, conventions or even full-blown holiday celebrations?
As the year dragged on, with few reference points, each day, even each month and season, blurred into the next.
Drive-by birthday parties, even weddings, and graduations became a thing. For a while.
Grocery shopping became either a mad frenzy or disappointing tour of empty shelves.
Our holidays, both their observances and the sales usually associated with them evaporated.
We seemed to lurch from one rumor, fear and obsession to another.
2020 will certainly go down in history for many reasons, but one was that for several months, a single roll of toilet paper cost more than a gallon of gas.
Who would have imagined empty freeways? Closed borders? Vacated airports? Abandoned public schools?
Families with internet access could work or carry on with school from home without much disruption, those without web access were isolated even more.
Impromptu Food is Free tables (https://foodisfree253.com/) popped up all over Pierce County and across the country.
Home deliveries – in some neighborhoods – became the new standard. In fact for days, if not weeks, at a stretch, delivery vehicles were the only traffic in many areas.
Work, for some, went on as usual. Some work increased dramatically while other areas, like travel and hospitality, dwindled beyond recognition.
And who of us knew, or cared about Zoom before 2020?
So with 2020 firmly in the rearview mirror, here are some suggestions for your 2021 bingo card; just remember that you heard it here first.
Bingo sector suppositions for 2021:
Canada permanently closes its borders to Americans
Earthquake/tsunami splits Panama, separating North and South America.
Washington, DC becomes the 51st state
Puerto Rico becomes the 52nd state
Washington state becomes two separate states
Kamala Harris becomes the first female president
Nancy Pelosi become the first female president
5,000 daily deaths from COVID become routine in the USA
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches record highs
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches record lows
Felonious ladybugs are discovered in Whatcom County
The United States changes its name to The United Confederation of Red and Blue States of America
Record hot/cold/wet/dry weather devastates US agricultural production.
Aliens invade earth. Few earthlings notice. Some celebrate.
Immigrants refuse to come to the USA to pick produce.
The US deploys additional troops in suburbs, malls and state capitols
The Chinese Yuan becomes the first Asian world-wide standard currency
Armed militants take over Walmart stores across the country. Most customers don’t notice.
The sovereign state of People of Walmart declares independence from its colonial overlords
COVID vaccine reactions turns people into zombies
COVID vaccine reactions release people from zombie induced trances
Scientists discover what cats really say to us and refuse to release their research findings.
The Lizard people finally reveal themselves and discover that we are all lizard people.
Requests for passports explode, then decline, then explode again, then decline again.
Created for your aMOOZment by Morf Morford and Danielle Nease
