It started in 5th grade. It was the end of music class. We were all catching our breath and rubbing our sore fingers after jamming out on the recorders and practicing the ukulele. Music class was taught by our amazing teacher, Ms. Hall. She made sure we took that class seriously. From 1st grade to 3rd, you were required to participate in theater performances. If you didn’t, you would get half your grade docked. Of course then, we didn’t understand what “docking” meant. We were just having fun dancing around on stage. Thinking back on it, it makes sense how I ended up here. Working in a theater. I was practically conditioned since I was 7 to be a performer. Jokes on them though, I don’t perform anymore. I now paint sets for shows. Music class was one of the more fun, but more stressful classes we had there.

 Now, let me set the scene for you. It was early March. We were lined up at the door of the music room, waiting for our teacher. We were 5th graders, so naturally we were being loud, talking, and shoving each other out of line. One of my friends at the time, Olivia, turns to me and starts talking.

“Hey Boe?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you heard about Covid?”

“What's Covid?”

“It’s apparently a really bad sickness. It started in China.”

Then a guy in our class turned to face us. His name was Carter. Carter was kind of a dick. He would point out people's acne in front of their friends, make fun of people with speech impediments, and just was an asshole in general. So when he turned around, I assumed he was going to go on another one of his dumb rants or make fun of something about us we couldn’t control. But surprisingly, he didn’t. Instead, he dropped a very interesting fact on us.

“I heard some schools might be getting shut down.”

“Oh. So like no school? We already had a snow day so that wouldn’t be smart.”

“No. Like online school. We do all our work on Ipads and computers.”

Olivia and I looked at him so incredibly confused. At the time, neither of us had heard of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Schoology. We just thought he was just messing with us. He had the previous day just made fun of the fact I struggled to read out loud so I was skeptical if what he was saying was true, or just meant to mess with me. Before I could ask him if he was telling the truth, our teacher had come to collect us from music. Her name was Ms. Buzzard. One of the best teachers I’ve had. She's the only reason I passed math that year. And for those wondering, yes, I am currently failing geometry.  

“Hey Ms. Buzzard!” 

Carter practically screamed her name. She was two feet away from him.

“What do you need?”

“Have you heard about Covid?”

“Yes I have. I heard schools might get shut down!” 

“ I hope ours gets shut down!”

That was all I really heard of the conversation. Besides, I had bigger fish to fry. The 4th & 5th grade musical. For 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders, the plays and performances were required. For 4th and 5th graders, it was optional. 4th grade year I took a break from it as I was kinda over theater at that time. But 5th grade year, we were doing The Lion King, one of my favorite movies ever. Of course it was the Jr version because the original version is "too traumatizing" for kids but whatever.