Are You Still Watching?

This pandemic has been challenging for everyone, some more than others. Everyone is dealing with this in different ways. They’re buying all the toilet paper, staying locked inside their homes going crazy, they’re dying their hair or cutting it, or deep cleaning their rooms for the hundredth time. Whenever something huge like this happens in our world, it normally brings us together, but this time, it feels like every man for themselves.

I’ve been taking it hard since I found out I won’t be returning to school to finish out my days with my friends and teachers, walking through those stained red and grey carpeted hallways, seeing all the friendly hall monitors in the hallways, waving at them  because they were nice and good with the students, knowing how to make us all smile or groan when they asked for our I.D.’s, and smelling the strong smell of taco-in-a-bag on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Spending every day doing the same thing, surrounded by the same people can drive you crazy. Trust me, I know. Every day for me is wake up and binge watch Criminal Minds or watching some random chick-flick that I know will make me end up crying. The only exciting part of my days are if I have to work. There are only so many shows and movies you can watch before your eyes hurt and you’re tired of watching the TV. Luckily, I haven’t watched my show long enough in one sitting for Netflix to ask me if I’m ‘Still watching’?

Too many bricks and porch supports have been lifted and moved over quarantine. I took a part my first porch. It took a lot of carrying and breaking of planks and too many splinters. My mom, an avid camper, has started to sit outside under the canopy and use the fridge in the camper. She’ll sit out there all day, just as if she was at the camp ground with her friends. I’ve played with my dogs and sat by endless fires with my parents, had my jeep worked on, and I’ve been making plans to paint my jeep in the hopefully near future. 

Online school is the new fad. It is what we have to do now, it is now our lives. The amount of papers that I have written since starting online work is beyond what I normally did in the classroom. I would rather write my papers with a pen or pencil that type them with the same font and clicks of the keyboard. The feeling of holding a pencil and writing words across the blue lines of a notebook piece of paper feels so much better than typing on the same keys, in my opinion.

Staying home is the best feeling when your life is being rushed and crushed and ran over three times. Before everyone was supposed to social distance and stay inside, our lives were so busy we had no time to breathe, now, we have all the time and all the air, and we wish we could go back to our busy and hectic lives.

I wish I could go back in time, and get to redo my senior year. Just to get to experience the last few joys of being a senior. I wish I could build a time machine, and go all the way back to kindergarten and relive my whole education as crazy as that sounds. I would enjoy everything and not take anything for granted. I wish none of this ever happened, I wish I could go back to my normally scheduled program.