How I broke my VR skepticism and found emotional escape during coronavirus sheltering

All it took to make me a believer of virtual reality was for reality to break.

This was the thought I had after about 45 minutes inside my VR headset on a Monday afternoon. I had barely moved. A forest surrounded me. A bird sat perched on a tree branch. My hand held a video game controller. But what I saw was a futuristic airbrush, a laser-like paint sprayer that looked like a prop from a 1940s sci-fi film.

A touch of a button and I could color the world. The bird before me was purple. Then it was pink. Then blue. Then pink again. I shot the feathered creature with random color as if I were Flora, Fauna and Merryweather all in one, toying with the chroma of the universe as if I alone possessed the power of the fairy godmothers of "Sleeping Beauty."

Soon the alarm on my smartphone sounded. This was my cue to remove the VR headset and flip on the radio to listen to another