The Better Story: Vaccine First, Then Dolls

Oh, oh, oh---look! New dolls for meeeee . . . FREE, on Fb marketplace! To be picked up Saturday morning.

Covid Shot First

I would go after work today--they're only 4 bikable miles away--but I'm going with my coworkers to get our Covid shots.
Yay!
We're carpooling to some clinic, a half-hour drive away.

I'd been so relieved the executive director had lined these shots up.... and then last night my clinic messaged me that I could get mine there as soon as Saturday.

I thought about doing that instead--it's a lot closer, and I wouldn't have to coordinate with others.

I decided it'd be better to go on this Field Trip with my coworkers.
I'm not feeling very fond of my coworkers at the moment, but we're living through this epoch together. So.

Plus, Penny Cooper said, It's the better story.

This actually isn't a very Penny-Cooper-thing to say. I thought she'd say, Take the shot that is soonest.

I heard you say it, she said.

Huh, yeah, I do say use "the better story" as a measuring stick.
(I think I heard it somewhere once?)

It's a helpful guide, for encouragement . . . or reassurance––most especially when things are frightening, but interesting. Like, every day since Trump got elected in 2016.

Most of my older coworkers already got shots, or don't want them––especially (but not only) some of the Black guys.
A customer who heard one of them saying they wouldn't get one said to me, "I have no patience with such stupidity."

Well. That's making an assumption, which is itself a stupid thing to do.
The customer didn't ask my coworker why.

I was glad to have a quote to hand––something I'd just read:
"You'd have to be crazy not to be paranoid as a black person in this country." (The US, that is.)

That's from the essay "Hole in the Head" by Ross Gay, a Black man, about a medical experiment with radiation that left a little Black boy with a hole in his head.
It's in Gay's collection The Book of Delights (2019), which is mostly about delightful things, but some not. (Thank you, Art Sparker, for sending me this.)

Anyway, back to the new dolls

They were originally listed at $25 for both. I might have paid that, but definitely was swayed by them being free.

I browse on FB for Madeline dolls sometimes, but they're always ridiculously expensive--more than eBay.
Yesterday amidst the expensive junk were these two Japanese dolls--listed as Ichimatsu:
"little girls or boys, usually with . .  glass eyes. The original Ichimatsu were named after an 18th-century Kabuki actor, but since the late 19th century the term has applied to child dolls. Since 1927... a solemn, gentle-looking little girl in elaborate kimono."

These are solemn, gentle-looking little girls. (The girl on the right looks a little frightened, but I wonder if she's actually singing.)
I think they would like to have their pictures painted too. By Saturday, my watercolor pens should have arrived!