We all remember when the Covid-19 Pandemic first started.
Everything was shut down.
Busy streets were now empty.
No one worked.
Everyone was staying home.
Bend, Oregon was a ghost town.
We felt guilty about going out.
They said we’d kill people.
Just for going to the grocery store.
We ordered food to be delivered directly to our doors.
There was some fear, sure.
But I think for some of us,
It felt like the whole world was having a snow day.
School was closed.
Except this time,
Everything else was closed too.
We sheltered in place.
Around our screens.
We all watched ‘The Tiger King’.
We scrolled through our phones
And saw memes about it.
We all tuned it.
We had to know what the memes meant.
Why they were funny.
We had a president people didn’t like,
Or loved too much.
He spoke to the corporate press every day.
But none of us knew what was really going on.
Politicians are pros at speaking without saying anything.
And the corporate press feeds us lies.
So we just stayed in.
Stuck with whomever we were living with.
Afraid to go outside.
They told us to wear masks.
Then they said not to wear masks.
Then they said to wear masks again.
The aisles at the grocery stores got bare.
We stocked up on toilet paper, Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer.
The ‘Karen’s’ were panicking.
Viral videos of them fighting over the treasured toilet paper started to trend.
That’s Walmart and America though.
It felt like a two-week long snow day
But after two weeks,
Some of us had to reluctantly go back to school.
Not the actual kids.
They stayed home for almost a year.
The ‘Essential Workers’ had to go.
Go to their shitty jobs, standing all day and scanning groceries for the ‘Karen’s’ of the world.
The snow day was ending for some of us.
But it was secretly fun while it lasted.