{"id":390245,"date":"2022-01-06T00:00:56","date_gmt":"2022-01-05T21:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/getting-through-the-pandemic-one-archie-comic-at-a-time\/"},"modified":"2022-01-06T00:00:56","modified_gmt":"2022-01-05T21:00:56","slug":"getting-through-the-pandemic-one-archie-comic-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/getting-through-the-pandemic-one-archie-comic-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"#Getting through the pandemic one Archie comic at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Getting through the pandemic one Archie comic at a time<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Jillian Horton: Every night at bedtime my son and I read Archie. Amid the brutal COVID disruptions, I feel viscerally what he is drawn to: the containment of it all.\n <\/div>\n
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With this week\u2019s announcement of school deferrals and the dreaded flip back to online learning, our children\u2019s education is brutally disrupted once more. My three sons have all struggled with the impact of closures and our general<\/a> failure to make schools safe. But my youngest son has coped with that stress by spending hours every day at a school he doesn\u2019t actually attend. It\u2019s called\u00a0Riverdale High.\u00a0<\/em>And you might even know the famous red-headed kid he hangs out with.<\/p>\n

When classes first shuttered in 2020, I\u2019d prod him. \u201cArchie<\/em>\u00a0is fine, but want to read something else?\u201d I offered the classics of my youth: the beautifully illustrated\u00a0Adventures of Babar. Tom\u2019s Midnight Garden. The Passage to Narnia.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0He\u2019d always respond with the same, pleasant \u201cNo, thanks,\u201d and turn his attention back to Jughead and Arch.<\/p>\n

Now I happ<\/a>en to think that comics are classics too. As a kid, they were a staple in my family, but for a very specific reason. My sister\u00a0loved\u00a0<\/em>comics. Twelve years my senior, she was left profoundly disabled by a brain tumor when she was six years old, and my parents were desperate to fill her life with whatever small things gave her pleasure. Every few weeks, we went to a tiny news<\/a>-and-smoke shop, where the smell of fresh paper mingled with tobacco. With my sister trailing me in her wheelchair, we\u2019d make a beeline for the perfectly-stacked pile of\u00a0Archie\u2019s Digests<\/em>\u00a0at the very back. We\u2019d peruse the options, debating the merits of\u00a0Betty and Me\u00a0<\/em>vs.\u00a0Jughead\u2019s Jokes,\u00a0<\/em>until we agreed on the final selections. Then, we went home to lose ourselves totally in Archie\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

My favourite thing about that world was probably the most obvious: no one in Riverdale had real problems, like a sister in a wheelchair whose life had been destroyed by a brain tumor. And no one in Riverdale seemed worried about their parents\u2019 mental health or even mortality in general\u2014subjects that weighed on me constantly in a family where we did not take those things for granted.<\/p>\n

I know there are problems with Archie and the gang. Arch is a lothario. He, Betty and Veronica are heavily triangulated. Jughead has an eating disorder. Reggie would score highly on a sociopathy scale. Moose is the kind of guy who grows up to have several restraining orders against him.<\/p>\n

And yet,\u00a0I feel viscerally what my son is drawn to: the containment of it all. There are no pandemics, no persisting existential threats. Nobody ever holds a grudge that goes beyond a storyline. There are only so many permutations of what can go wrong in Archie\u2019s universe.<\/p>\n

I have a stable income and lots of privilege, and so my\u00a0son has been shielded from COVID\u2019s worst indirect impacts on kids. The things he\u2019s lost are still sad and painful\u2014time with cherished grandparents, two years of playtime with friends, holiday gatherings, and the little moments that loom large in the highlight reel of our childhood. But I don\u2019t believe his losses will hold him back in life, and I can\u2019t say the same thing for millions of kids around the world. We have failed those children, and the scope of what they have suffered will take us years to grasp.\u00a0I\u2019m inclined to think that whatever healthy coping strategies they have used to get through it should not be tampered with.<\/p>\n

So now, my son and I have a ritual: Every night at bedtime, we read\u00a0Archie<\/em>. We take turns voicing the characters and we usually end up laughing so hard that one of us wakes up the dog. I briefly forget about the smoldering crises at our hospitals, the tailspin precipitated by Omicron, my deep misgivings about whether governments are doing enough to keep our kids safe. For a few minutes, all of that goes on pause. Archie has become a nightly respite for me, too.<\/p>\n

Someday, maybe Archie and Reggie will have a showdown about whether masks are required to set foot in Pop\u2019s. Maybe Dilton will find himself patiently explaining to Moose for the hundredth time that vaccines don\u2019t contain fetal cells and he hasn\u2019t been magnetized. Maybe Betty will tell Ronnie she has to cancel her huge Saturday night party, that she\u2019s being selfish by only thinking about herself when Riverdale\u2019s test positivity exceeds 30 per cent.<\/p>\n

But for now, Riverdale is free of the endless problems that have infiltrated every aspect of our daily lives. That\u2019s why I\u2019m letting my kid stay in that world whenever he wants, until I know there is something better for him to come back to.<\/p>\n

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