Being in the words business, it’s pretty upsetting to realize that it’s no cliche to admit, “there are no words,” to explain what’s happened to our world in just a few short days.

Simultaneously, like so many of you, several times a day,I’m stunned, aghast, frightened, amused and resolute.

I’m the only person left in the Sentinel Colorado newsroom, sales and business offices. Rooms that are almost always filled with wise-cracks, coffee, cursing, puns, candy, bad jokes and dubious smells are silent. It feels and sounds like I am the only person on an airborne jetliner with no destination in sight.

I’ve been through the dread and shock of looming nuclear attack, economic crashes, mass murders and the Sept. 11 attacks. There is no parallel to what we’re all going through now. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have grown up outside of the disasters the elder of us know so well to give some kind of context to what’s happening.

So rather than try and give meaning to the thousands of things we’re all reeling from right now, here are a few things I’ve noticed that I’ll remember long after we all get through this.

• My hands are already raw from washing. I don’t think I’m going to make it. When this is over, I’ll never wash my hands again.

• Not long ago, I’d never heard of social distancing. Now I write it several times a day. It was a vague concept just a week ago. Now I not only get it, my internal radar goes off when anyone gets closer than 6 feet. Don’t. Just don’t.

• If you haven’t been on the roads, you know all those freaking ass-hat drivers that have invaded Denver area highways the last few years? The ones who weave through solid or almost desolate highways morning, noon and night. They rocket and weave at speeds neither their cars nor their driving skills can handle? Apparently they don’t work at home right now.

• On the other hand, driving to and from my personal palace here at the Sentinel has been a total flashback to 1968 when the traffic situation was just about like this all the time. Actually being able to see the roads along the I-25 corridor, which back then was called the Valley Highway, I realized the roads haven’t changed much since. We’re a city built for 1 million trying to accommodate four times that much.

• As begrudging as I’ve become over hoarders of paper towels and toilet paper, I get it, at least the TP thing. With so many Americans having so many bathroom issues, a lack of rolled tissues there sets off understandable panic, I guess. Paper towels? They really do make re-usable ones still. I think we’ll survive sans Bounty. But, the real freaky thing is gaggles of people hoarding bottled water. Water? Where the hell are you people from? Do they turn the water off in Chicago, Dayton or Dallas every time the stock market falls or bad weather sets in? Not only does metro Aurora have the best drinking water in the country, as long as you pay your bill, that tap is going to gush the good stuff every single time. Me? The good stuff is caramel-colored and comes from Dublin, and I’m drinking it by the thimble to make it hold out.

• I understand now why it was that adults who lived through the worst of the Great Depression became such suckers for nostalgia. Today, I’m nostalgic for what it was like in the good ‘ol days from last week.

• I don’t care if I have nowhere to go but this tomb of an office, I got a thing for cheap gas. These are the days.

• I never noticed how many people cough and sneeze. It’s constant.

• I have never seen schadenfreude like I have from the kids on my block worried about not being able to go to school for, possibly, the rest of the school year.

• One of the few silver linings in this crisis is the shocking silence coming from the crazy anti-vaxxer whacks.

• I’m sorry that I used to complain when my wife would ask me to stop at the store on the way home and run in and get something, when it was clearly no big deal back then.

• Any kind of partisan sniping is repugnant these days. But you don’t have to belong to any political party or persuasion to watch President Donald Trump right now and see what a hot mess he is, and how we are stuck with him like skunk on a dog snout. We will, however, prevail over the virus and his final few months in office.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com