While it's wild to think that the pandemic started in 2020, Reddit user u/thenostalgiabird asked: "What was the weirdest part of the pandemic?" and a lot of people recalled incidents that happened in the beginning. Here's what they had to say.
1. "I don't remember 2021 at all."
"My sense of time was skewed. 2020 blended into early 2022. I still have to think twice about when certain events happened."
2. "Any type of 'party' on Zoom."
3. "When a bunch of celebrities sang a John Lennon song thinking it’d inspire people or some shit."
4. "I was so afraid of sneezing and coughing in public spaces 'cause people normally started to give you some weird looks."
5. "I remember some of the restaurants near me started selling groceries during lockdown. It was so weird walking past a high-end restaurant known for its oysters only to see stacks of toilet paper, six packs of beer, non-perishable foods, etc. in its windows."
6. "I live a block away from a very busy highway. While I never really noticed the sound of the highway, when it was gone, the silence was amazing!"
7. "I never understood the sourdough starter craze. We get locked in our homes for a few weeks and suddenly everyone’s baking bread?"
"People wanted to bake, but yeast was hard to find so a lot of people turned to making their own sourdough, which utilizes wild yeast. I fell into the trap. I got quite good at it (for a while anyway) and still have my rye sourdough starter that I made in 2020 named Rye-an Reynolds. I had one made from all-purpose white flour I named Betty White. But like the real Betty White, she died."
8. "Toilet paper hoarding."
9. "Working in COVID ICU and everyone around me telling me COVID was fake, meanwhile I was having nightmares every single night and couldn’t eat. We lived very different realities."
10. "Waiting in a lineup outside of the grocery store. Everyone had to stand on a sticker to stay properly distanced from one another, and security would wait until someone left before letting another person inside. No such thing as a 'quick shop' during those times."
11. "Tiger King."
12. "How the wildlife started walking through towns as soon as the stay-at-home orders took full effect."
"And the pictures of all the cities. No cars on the roads, and the skies were actually clear blues instead of smog."
13. "How relaxing it was when everyone was keeping their distance like I’d been doing for decades."
14. "How all these companies that ABSOLUTELY couldn't offer flexible working, suddenly just could. And now, they want you to believe that they can't again..."
15. "How people who were considered essential (i.e. healthcare, retail workers, farmers) had to keep working without any pay increases, while everyone else stayed home and got paid. The rich just got richer, too."
16. "Playing Animal Crossing for 12 hours a day."
17. "The weirdest part, in my opinion, was learning to recognize people by the top half of their face, then having to re-learn recognizing them by the rest of their face when mask requirements were loosened. No one ever really looked like you imagined they would either, for better or for worse."
18. "It’s the photo of the priest baptizing a baby from a distance with a water pistol. Pure absurdity."
19. "Pretty much every commercial kept reminding us we were 'living in unprecedented times' for a few months, and I HATED IT."
