This is how the food pyramid looks during a pandemic

If you missed this week’s column on SouthernThing.com, you can click here to read the full column. A few paragraphs are excerpted below. 

It’s amazing the things you learn about yourself and your family during quarantine for a global pandemic.

For example, Sweetums and I have learned the distinction between “booping” a nose and “bopping” one – and discovered that this issue can be as divisive as politics and college football.

Sweetums likes to tap my nose with his index finger and make a little “pop” noise with his mouth. Sometimes, he likes to do it to our cat, mainly because it utterly confuses her, which in turn, tickles Sweetums. (Don’t judge. What passes for entertainment during a pandemic should never be examined too closely, is all I’m sayin.’)

I call this action “bopping the nose.” Sweetums calls it “booping.” He decided this issue was important enough to take to the masses for a vote, by which I mean he asked his Facebook friends what they thought. What we learned is groundbreaking in its anthropological implications: Many people consider a “bop” to be more aggressive and potentially more injurious than a “boop,” which is the choice of gentle creatures.

Here are a few comments:

“Bops hurt. Boops don’t.”

“Bop is closed fist, boop is fingertip.”

“You boop the nose and bop upside the head.” (Now, see, I always thought you “whop” somebody upside the head. And just like that, I’m confused again.)

Another person referenced Little Bunny Foo Foo, saying “bopping” field mice on the head was naughty, whereas “booping” would have been socially acceptable and likely never would have resulted in a strange and oddly violent children’s rhyming song. So there’s that. Click here to read the full column.

More columns from quarantine:

READ: This is what our pets are thinking during quarantine

READ: Want to relieve stress? Get an adult coloring book filled with flowers …. or Jason Momoa

READ: Need motivation while working from home? Wearing a tiara works every time

READ: Walmart is selling fewer britches than tops. Mama would say it’s time to stay home

READ: I’m ‘sheltering in place’ of bathing and doing laundry. How about you?