A Couple of Fancy-Pants Words from the Ex-Biology Teacher

Today, from my ever-diminishing vault of biology terminology, I share an observation and an insight. 

Coevolution abounds in nature (take pollination - bees get nectar and flowers get pollinated). It seems reasonable to suggest we - meaning you the customer and us the shop - have been doing a little of this dance to mutual benefit in 2020. CO-VID-evolution, as it were.

Early on we pushed as much merchandise as possible to the front windows. You came in droves and window-shopped with a vengeance. 

We posted ridiculously detailed videos and photos of our shelves on social media. We gave you our personal cell numbers, and together we went back-and-forth with media messages and calls and text photos. We felt like traders on the floor of some novel stock exchange.  

In July we rolled out a modest e-commerce platform on this website. In the first two weeks of December you placed almost 400 online orders. You've trained yourselves to pick-up curbside and we've learned to deliver within five miles. (A few of you have learned to fudge the radius a bit in your favor - perfectly normal within the coevolution paradigm, by the way.)

So it seems together we've co-adapted to our novel circumstances. Good on both of us. Thanks for dancing.

The insight (pro-tip here) stems from the term crepuscular, which refers to animals that are most active at dawn and dusk. If you'd like to avoid the crowds in the store (and, yes, we do regulate and limit customer numbers...but still), come early or late. We typically get a sleepy start before 10:30 or so, and the last hour between 6-7 pm is often the least congested time of all.

And that concludes the bio-blast for today. (Words, too, are subject to the evolutionary paradigm: use 'em or lose 'em. I'm just doing some reps here.) Thanks for indulging me.