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I have my Gmail account set up with tabs for Promotions, Social, Updates, etc. When I opened this account 10 years or so ago, I vowed that I’d use it only for private email, and give my old Yahoo address to all of the businesses that demand my email address every time I buy something. But with one thing and another, my system got corrupted and everyone in the world has my Gmail address. The tabs help me to control the spam, to the extent that a person can control spam. 

Every so often I check the spammy emails, just to make sure that I’m not missing something important. Yesterday, I saw an email with no subject line, from a brand-new sender: Coronavirus. Yes, now it’s sending me emails. Maybe the novel coronavirus has merged with a computer virus and it’s trying to infect me and my computer at the same time. But I’m too smart to fall for that, aren’t I? Coronavirus will have to get up earlier in the morning if it wants to get me via email. 

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Yesterday it was an email from the coronavirus and today it's a text message from the dentist’s office. I'm sitting in the "virtual waiting room," also known as my car, parked in the parking lot, and the office just texted me that my dentist is running late. Well, someone who works in the office texted me but it feels disembodied and impersonal as if the desk or the building is tapping away on an iPhone, keeping me abreast of waiting times. I had to take time away from a busy work day to come here, and I arrived ten minutes early as instructed. I live very close by, and it occurs to me that they probably knew that the dentist was running late and they could have let me know this before I left the house. I guess I can't blame a disembodied text message. So I'm multitasking. 

This isn't a routine check up. I have an old filling that's broken and I'm here to get it fixed. I can't stand novocain, but I'm glad that people can still take care of minor health problems even amid the pandemic. Coronavirus isn't the only game in town. Maybe that's why it's out there sending email messages. Maybe it doesn't want us to forget about it. It probably shouldn't worry.