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When you miss giving big ole bear hugs to friends, the next best thing is sending big ass cinnamon rolls for them in swaddle up in. I mean, treat like you mean it. Go big, then go home after sidewalk drop, because Circuit Breaker.
An endemic of the pandemic is the - if even possible - accelerating addiction to social media, burgeoning breaking news, debilitatingly bad TV and WhatsApp chats that balloon to more than 200 messages if you’re away from your phone for three hours.
But a few of us have tumbled down another kind of slippery slope, landing in an Aladdin’s Cave plump with our favorite pizzas, cakes, cookies, spirits, sandwiches, sausages, buns, noodles, cheeses, impossibly juicy mangoes, crunchy jackfruit, and other Circuit Breaker elixirs. Instead of stuffing ourselves with these veritable victuals, then using up all the genie’s wishes to relieve heartburn, gout and shame, we’re sending them off to unsuspecting friends and family. Not too long ago, excitement unwound in the tick tick tick of the clock counting down to a highly anticipated communal eating event like Pizzapalooza at Àmo. Now it titillates in the click click click selection of recipient(s)’ favorite dishes and snacks and desserts across online menus dear to your collective guts, because there’s no fun like showing off your intimate knowledge of what gets their gastro-intestinal juices flowing. (Plus, eat and support local.) The pay-off is the Circuit Breaker big reveal — you know you’ve pulled off a huge one when your phone blows up with lines and lines of emojis clapping jaws as their faces turn blue from hyperventilation, a sprawling photo shoot of all the food that’s arrived, and then, The Social Shout-Out proving you’re a most marvelous meal fixer, the appetite king or queen maker. The ensuing smug satisfaction will sweep you off your feet for the rest of the day. This will never get old.
Yet, the real joy, the one that truly matters, lies with the recipients. The ones who work unrelentingly as part of the country’s immense campaign to defeat Covid-19. The ones who are so very far from home, whose hometowns have been devastated by the Coronavirus, whose families are 30-hour flights away, who have not been able to properly observe Lent and celebrate Easter, who can’t help but worry about the safety of those in their care or what will be of their jobs and businesses, but still think about you and ask how you’re doing.
And selfishly, as the giver, you greedily slurp up all the gratitude for having friends and family deserving of the nicest things in the world to Circuit Break fast, and repast.