You can feel it on the chairlift, reverberating from the nervous tapping of a ski boot whose wearer is barking via Blackberry at his financial adviser.
You can hear it in the checkout line. “Not today, sweetie. We’ll be playing with the toys we already have,” says a mom prying a Handy Manny’s Talkin’ Toolbox from her preschooler.
You can see it in the crowd at a downtown bus stop, brows furled with news of more layoffs ticking across a sign on this newspaper’s own building.
We’re stressed, many of us. So stressed that we find ourselves venting with strangers.
“It’s like walking down a pier blindfolded, never knowing when you’re going to fall off the edge,” said Mike, a telecom rep, in describing his jitters Wednesday on our flight to Denver.
Some of us deal with economic anxiety by clenching our jaws or cracking our knuckles. Mike, it seems, gorges on caramel-flavored Pirate’s Booty.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said, finishing off his snack puffs well before takeoff.
Others can’t sleep.
“It’s tough to rest when losing your home is a real possibility,” said Alan McBeth, 62, laid off from his job in November.
As if angst about their own finances weren’t enough, some people report tossing and turning about the downturn on a macro level.
Graduate student Seth Rubin says he lost sleep Thursday after watching news about former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s letting banks rip off taxpayers in the first bailout.
Rubin’s girlfriend is spun up about the national debt. “It’s averaging $3 billion a day. That’s beyond-belief, Godzilla-like stressful,” Sarah Morton said.
Without sleep come ailments that sufferers are blaming on the economy.
Such as the headaches and blurred vision endured by Denver jeweler Jay Feder. Or the incessant ear-ringing that has prompted Mel Martinez, my local produce guy, to meditate in his storage cooler to temper his freak-outs about his own grocery bills. Or, if you must know, the shoulder twitch reported by a fellow Post reporter and the molar cap an editor wedged off a tooth in anxiety as our friends lose jobs in newsrooms across the country.
It took three weeks and countless more Advils to figure out that stress may be messing with more than my own head.
“We’re seeing blood pressure, blood sugar, chronic issues all out of whack,” said Thornton family practitioner Philip Rosenblum. “Patients are coming with colds they’ve had for weeks. They’re stressed, depressed and aren’t taking care of themselves.”
“It’s taking a toll on our bodies, partly because nobody knows what’ll come,” said Denver acupuncturist Michael Lay, reporting an upturn he credits mainly to the downturn.
Which brings me to a moment at my neighborhood elementary school Thursday as parents contemplated whether to dip into the rainy-day fund.
“You don’t get any more rainy-day than this,” one mother proclaimed.
“Maybe,” mused another.
“Unless these are just, you know, sprinkles before the storm . . .,” mumbled another.
We all shifted uncomfortably, massaging the aches in our necks and backs that seemed to flare up just at that moment.
For none of us in that gym had imagined raising our kids in such uncertain times. Just as Martinez never expected needing to meditate in the produce cooler. Just as McBeth never planned to spend his retirement years scrambling for a job.
Said McBeth: “It’s a bit of a comfort, although a bizarre comfort, that the rest of the world is stressing out too.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
