A Covid Summer

The Covid pandemic found many people locked in places and conditions unfamiliar, but why should a summer of enforced isolation mean anything special for an old bachelor hermit who never goes anywhere and never does anything unusual? Why should it impact a widowed grandmother who wants nothing more from life than to be left alone? A pandemic lockdown might be a nuisance to some, but for retirees it offers the perfect excuse to not do what they would never want to do in the first place. Pandemics provide more time for guilt-free afternoon naps.

Until an eighth-grade inner-city boy gets stranded in small-town Minnesota during a visit to that same grandmother, and crashes grandma's old bicycle in the bachelor hermit's driveway. Everyone knows eighth-grade boys at the age of poverty attract incidents, but surely one boy cannot be held responsible for the parade of field mice, chipmunks, squirrels, fox and - oh my God, a rabid skunk - that follow in his wake. Nor for the miniature poodle who decides to attack the skunk. Nor for the vivacious eighth grade girl walking the poodle. Nor for the garbage truck that screeches to a halt just in front of the skunk. Nor for what happens next. Life will never be the same for retired folk who once shrugged off the thought of a lockdown, but there is no denying that hectic lives are fuller.

Here is a coming-of-age romp about youngsters under the care of oldsters who themselves face coming-of-age questions, with good intentions if not always good grace. You will encounter tedious dissertations on pickling fish, splitting firewood, making omelets, felling trees, eating sashimi, cooking beans and watching old movies on old television sets. And sex. Along with profanity-laced dialogue that puts Shakespeare to shame. And bedroom scenes where people sleep.

A story for the big of heart, not the faint of heart.