In yet another blow to community normalcy, the Mercer Island Swingers Club, one of the longest continually active social organizations on the Island, canceled its April meeting last weekend.
“While we feel — passionately — that these monthly gatherings are ‘essential’ to our members’ mental and physical health,” said the club’s events coordinator, Woody Packer, “the State of Washington doesn’t believe it’s safe for a group of two or more adults who don’t live together to congregate less than six feet apart, let alone a group of five or more adults less than three feet apart.”
April marks the first time in more than four decades that the club hasn’t rendezvoused on at least a monthly basis, according to club president Hughes C. Alice: “The last time we scrubbed a meeting was during the Great Western Washington Chlamydia Scare of ’79.”
In an effort to satisfy public health authorities, the club offered to require members to use masks and related paraphernalia, but a top-to-bottom review by local epidemiologists deemed the equipment ill-suited to preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
Some of the club’s members advocated moving the meeting online to address social distancing restrictions, but their plans hit an unexpected snag. Said long-time member Rhonda Jeremy: “We were prepared to switch to Zoom, but our grandchildren refused to come over and set up the cameras.”