Many moons ago the editorial team in a local newspaper dubbed a work experience kid “Sixty Questions’’.
The reason being that the kid, who was a lovely young fellow by the way, just kept asking questions of all of us, day after day for a week.
I was reminded of this when someone asked for the millionth time this week if life can get any worse right now.
Now it’s true that we are living in interesting times, to say the least.
Here in our own country we went through a very long drought.
And even before that ended horrific bushfires made it a double whammy, especially on the south coast of NSW and in eastern Victoria.
We hardly had time to catch our breath when a pandemic came along and completely turned our lives upside down.
And just as things are slowly becoming better on the coronavirus front, America starts burning itself after a black man named George Floyd is brutally murdered by a policeman and it’s all caught on video.
It’s scary stuff what happening over there and who knows how it will end.
Don’t forget people are still dying by their thousands across the world because of the virus, so that makes it a fair question: how much worse can things get indeed.
The short answer is not much.
World War III keeps flashing by every time the question is asked, but gee, let’s hope humanity doesn’t make that leap.
Towards the end of last year there was a collective “good riddance, 2019’’ call.
What we didn’t know was that 2020 was going to be even worse, and we’re not even half way through this terrible year.
But we must be positive: the drought is pretty much over, the bushfires are gone and not likely to be as bad for a few years.
Here we have the virus under control and are slowly returning to normal.
Lesson: we can overcome any adversity. As my editorial team did all those years ago when “Sixty Questions’’ drove us nuts for five days.
In case you’re wondering, here’s the Top 5 questions from the kid:
Number 1. How much do journalists get paid.
Number 2. Do photographers get paid the same.
Number 3. Do you have to be good at English to become a journalist.
Number 4. Do you need a university degree to be a journalist.
Number 5. Why do you go the pub for lunch every day.
