COVID-19 is world-shattering, insidious, heinous, and terrible in every way except maybe, slightly one. Anecdotally, it seems as though people are talking to each other more? Without uniform top-down rules from various experts and governmental entities, they’re discussing space and boundaries with their friends and families: what’s okay, not okay, when and where to wear masks, where to go, how close to get—all of it. It can get uncomfortable, of course, but many are asking for what they want, telling people how to make them feel safe amid a life-threatening disease. Disagree about what that means? Too bad. You gotta find a way through.
In a way it’s healthy so many are having these conversations. The catch is that when you don’t have the conversation, and then you do something that someone you must interact with deems out of line, it’s not good. It’s bad, even! Expectations are not met and trust gets broken! And if that trust didn’t exist to begin with? Well.
Picking an example out of thin air here, but, I dunno, take Channing Tatum and his co-parent and ex-wife, Jenna Dewan. According to a recent TMZ piece, the former couple had a disagreement. Tatum turned 40 at the end of April. That wasn’t the problem. Turning 40 is the new turning 22! The problem is that he had a small birthday party. This is where the story gets slightly less relatable, but only for a moment: To celebrate, he had five friends over to ride dirt bikes on his “personal ranch,” in the words of the tabloid. But the disconnect is something we’ve surely all experienced at some point in the last few months. Did he clear it with all the parties involved? Did he ask Dewan, with whom he co-parents their daughter, Everly? Vanity Fair has reached out to Dewan for comment.
She reportedly expressed her concern that something could have spread while out there doing wheelies (?) and jumpies (??) or whatever one does on a dirt bike. Then that could have spread to their daughter and then to the Dewan household, which also includes her new fiancé, Steve Kazee, and their newborn boy. Tatum agreed to take a test and apparently tested negative. Crisis averted. Co-parenting resumed.
This is a happy ending that still manages a moral, I suppose. Now more than ever, we’re painfully aware of whom we affect. It kind of sucks and sometimes leads to stories in TMZ! But it’s nice to be nice and have a conversation.
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