It is no secret that everything is so weird and different than it was at the beginning of the year. Yeah, this year started with bad news and has continually packed it on and surprised us, but everything was at least still a little bit normal…. but then Corona happened. A global-wide pandemic is not something I ever thought I would live through, but here we are. If I’m going to be honest, my expectations were not really met. I was thinking more along the lines of zombies, nuclear deformations, and burning bodies. Regardless of the actual dramatics of our real-life pandemic, lives have been lost and changed seemingly forever. Even though 9 months is not a long time in the grand scheme of things, it has been an excessive amount of time for seemingly everything to change.
Before the pandemic, coming to work or going to school with the sniffles was a normal thing. Teachers or employers would not excuse you from your responsibility unless you were able to go to the doctor and get an excuse. I have always thought that was silly because sometimes you know you just have a head cold and don’t need to spend money on a doctor’s visit, and you want to stay home. I salute and respect people who stayed home regardless because they didn’t want to risk infecting other people because that’s how I think it should be. Now that Corona is happening, I think a lot of people feel the same way. Now, people are encouraging others to stay home and away from people if they have the slightest sniffle or upset stomach in an attempt to reduce unnecessary exposure to the virus. I think this will probably stay like this for a while since everyone is noticing how easy it can be to catch up and how much more important someone’s life and well-being are compared to their job or schoolwork.
I didn’t think about this before since I have had a total of three snow days in my lifetime, but someone pointed out that there will probably never be any more snow days after this. For college students or working adults, there probably never going to be any ‘snow days’ regardless of the pandemic, but for elementary and high-school students, this is kinda a big deal. Even though I never really had snow days, I did have a lot of ‘bad weather days’ where the backroads would flood after a long night of rain so the busses weren’t able to pick up students. I remember waking up and going to my parents’ room to watch the news and wait to see our parish name glide across the bottom of the screen for “SCHOOL CLOSURES.” The feeling was like none other and the joy of an unexpected day off was immaculate. But now that we have had a societal technological movement, teachers will probably not miss an opportunity to hold ZOOM classes regardless of the snow that is falling outside. I will say that this is one thing that is ruined because of the pandemic and will probably never recover.
