Staying safe in a pandemic is like sneaking up on a deer.

When I was young, my fifth grade class went to a camp for a week. We slept in cabins and did outdoor activities. One activity led by the counselors was to see how quiet we could be in the woods. The counselors would pretend to be deer and all of us would try and sneak up on them. I knew how to be quiet in the woods, I spent a lot of time in the woods and field behind my house, so I thought I would do well. But when the activity started it turned into something like a game of red-light-green-light and all of the kids just ran when the counselors had their backs turned and then froze when the counselors looked back. I started out being quiet and slow, but everyone else was way ahead, so I eventually joined in the free-for-all dash when the counselors' backs were turned. 

When it was over, the counselors announced that the only person who had done the task correctly was one boy, who happened to live on my same street. They praised him for going quietly and for advancing slowly but surely. He wasn't at the front, but he had done the best job. They had neither heard him or seen him moving. 

I was so angry with myself because I had known how to move like that, too, but I had gotten caught up in what everyone else was doing. What I knew got thrown out the window and I joined in the group's poor judgement on how to move through the woods. 

The lesson I learned from that activity serves me well now. People I know are getting together, my neighbors - who are very sensible people -  had a 4th of July party, acquaintances of my husband are going on vacation to a beach. And I sometimes feel pressure to relax my own rules about how to stay safe during a pandemic. But it's the same idea now as back way back then in 5th grade. Don't follow what everyone else is doing and get caught up in the group mentality when you know it's not right.

Stay safe everyone.