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DAY 21: TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS 58,901 WORLDWIDE


Instead of days slowly melting like molasses from a fierce summer sun, the days were now spinning. A mandate had been set forth by her school district stating that school would resume in a month.

The party was over.

This intense scramble to shift from brick-and-mortar pedagogy to online and virtual methods filled her days with work: video calls, online lesson crafting, and even real phone calls.

She had been completely focused on herself. But she had a thought while video-chatting with her best friend, who was also mother to a three-year-old son. What about the kids?

In twenty years, what would they be like? Would this young generation be full of obsessive compulsive clean freaks who would bring back face masks just like they were now bringing back ripped jeans, mullets, and nerdy visors from the eighties? Would it be a cool “flashback to 2020” trend? Or would there be an explosion of health care workers, adults who as children suffered through the worst pandemic of the century while hearing about the unsung heroes of the fight- health care workers- and aspired to be one of them when they grew up?

She normally didn’t care much for small humans, and rarely thought about their plight, but she did realize that this situation was particularly difficult for them. There was no preschool, no kindergarten, no social interaction when it was most important to have it. Her best friend’s son kept interrupting the video call to show her flowers he had picked for her. How long had it been since he had played with a child his own age? Another good and close friend called and shared how badly she felt for her young son as well- there would be no “graduation” from preschool for him. He was all alone, separated from his first ever group of classmates.

Would the children be recluses? Unable to join back into society after this undetermined period of isolation? Or would they be extra-extroverted and endlessly annoying to anyone that would pay them any attention?

They were just another set of unintended victims ravaged by the path of the virus. No one would escape being emotionally mangled in some way.

She was truly happy not to have procreated.

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