Think back three years ago to the day. Where were you? How did you feel? What did the future hold for you? In a “normal” world and on a “normal” date, you’d probably have zero clue what I’m talking about, but the date being March 13, 2023, three years since the first Covid lockdown, changes everything. In that moment the world felt like it was ending, no more School, no more sports, no more work, and no more true interactions. Life was lived through Zoom, FaceTime, Google Classroom and E-Backpack reminders. The majority of people, at least in my hometown, hated this “living through a screen” idea, but was it really much different than the interactions we chose to have before, or were we just forced to open our eyes to the reality that we already lived on a screen?
When school was cancelled I was a sophomore in high school, March 12 I tried out for the varsity cheer team, waited for my mom to come pick me up, and for spring break to get started because I was SO tired of being at school every day and I needed break that all students longed for and deserved. The next morning I woke up, went with my family to Schlitterbahn without a care in the world, went to my best friends house for a few hours and then got the phone call that school would be out until April 1st, but they wanted us to try to do school on some app called Zoom. I remember thinking that I’d never be able to learn that way, I’d never see my friends again and I’d be stuck inside forever, but then a few weeks in I realized how is this any different than learning from Tim & Moby videos? Or Bill Nye? Or CrashCourse? How is being on Zoom any different than a big FaceTime call with friends if you try to make it fun? With that changed mindset the world kind of started to feel normal again, I prioritized making game nights with my friends via zoom where we would play CardsAgainstQuarantine, UNOnline, Clue and any other card/board game we could find in a shareable link, then we would get on a Zoom call and play for hours and hours every Friday night. All the sudden this sad online world that I hated became some of my fondest memories and quarantine didn’t make me feel so far away.
So when I look back three years ago, I still feel the fear and anxiety of the world coming to an end, I think about all the people who lost their lives, jobs, homes, and friends, I think about how different my life would be if Covid never came to the US, but I also think about how lucky I am that the virus didn’t hurt anyone in my family, how grateful I am for modern technology for keeping me close to my friends and family, even when physically we were miles apart, and how I can look back now and see how through all of the negatives, life still had a sense of normalcy.
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