March 13 marks one year since East Chapel Hill High School closed due to COVID-19. This week we’ll post columns from five students reflecting on the past year. This is 5 to 365.
On March 13, 2020, I remember joking to my friends, “Have a great summer!”
I was kidding; everyone I talked to seemed to think we’d be back after spring break. The break that Mr. Link repeatedly reminded us wasn’t actually three weeks long, but instead just two weeks off, then one week of something novel: online school.
Looking back, all my joking on that last day feels kind of insensitive. The pandemic simply wasn’t real to me yet, and the hysteria we all were hearing about in New York certainly hadn’t set in yet.
It just felt like that time in fifth grade when a snowstorm ended up giving us a whole week off of school. Coronavirus felt like the mother of all snow days.
But quickly, I realized this was far different (and not just because there wasn’t any snow to play in). Snow days don’t kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. Snow days don’t upend life as we know it. Maybe they keep us inside for a day or two, but then the snow melts and we go back to school and tell tales to our friends about how we accidentally sledded into a creek. Snow days don’t go on for one… four… eight… 12 months.
The previous day my mom and I had driven up to Roxboro to watch my sister’s first middle school softball game (my high school baseball season had already been paused, and the upcoming three—or two—week break from school had just been announced). I looked around the little ballpark and thought about how it would probably be the last non-distanced sporting event I’d attend for a while. But it still felt normal—almost—my sister’s team’s planned stop at Golden Corral on the way home was called off due to COVID concerns. Probably a smart move.
Then we just went off to school that Friday, still worried about things like the business project in Civics. In retrospect, it’s kind of weird how we didn’t wear masks or try to distance or anything that day. We knew the storm was coming (we had all been watching the news plenty, still trying to wrap our heads around Biden’s shocking Super Tuesday performance). It was like as soon as we left school and went home that day, the pandemic officially began.
I played catch with my dad every day through the spring, staying ready for a baseball season that never restarted. Then I trained for a soccer season that didn’t happen in August (though at least it happened eventually).
And in time, virtual school commenced. I have to say, it now feels a lot less cool than it did last spring.
It all makes me wonder whether we would’ve done anything differently on the last day of in-person school for over a year if we’d known it was such. I’m still not sure how to answer that question.
I do, however, remember thinking on Friday March 13, 2020, that it would be the last normal(ish) day for a long time. It’s just that none of us knew how long.
One year later, the snow day continues.
Chilling post. Good work Atticus.