In any other year, summer would rule our chatter. The usual stuff: sunshine, vacations, beach days and, where I live down South, the interminable heat and humidity. We’d hear lots of college football smack talk, too.

Not in 2020, the year that will make our great-grandchildren gasp, then whisper how they avoided that tour through hell.

We’ve got sunshine aplenty, but for what except watching tomatoes grow? That is, really watching them blossom and fatten as we languish, isolated, hoping for an outing to the gas station.

Vacations are dreams.

Fever dreams.

Beach days are scary.

Scary scarce.

Even the football talk is dreary. No ’Bama fans bashing LSU, or Ohio State fans trashing Michigan. Just the aching, grieving faithful grimacing at … who, what? A virus measuring only 0.125 microns?

No wonder the frustrated and angry and virus-weary among us are shedding their last husks of patience and civility. Who among us now is all of us, every caged and cheerless soul.

Ugh. The novel coronavirus has lost all novelty, and we are so, so, so done with it.