The List: 2022
What’s in and what’s out for the year ahead
It took six days for the cargo ship Ever Given to free itself from the Suez Canal, but here we are, nine months later, still existentially trapped. We thought we’d be Building Back Better, that our supply-chain woes had been solved in Early Quar, that “Jeopardy!” would have a real host by now. We waxed and vaxxed ourselves for a Shot Girl Summer, but our tenuous optimism pledged Delta Omicron — a sorority known for big parties and killer hangovers.
Our divisions grew even more irreconcilable: vaxxed vs. anti-vax, “Stop the Steal” vs. everything we thought we learned in middle-school civics, kidney donors vs. short-story authors, bones vs. no bones, Kim vs. Kanye. It makes a person want to flee for Austin, or Cancún, or even Upper Marlboro, where the zebras roam, er, roamed.
Things have to get better eventually, right? Maybe we can look to the Ever Given’s example: In mid-December, the ship returned to the Suez Canal, passing through without incident. Until we, too, can wriggle free of our impediments, join us for a booster dose of the List.
