Son of a biscuit. I have COVID-19. I know! I made it more than two years of the pandemic surrounded by germy teenagers with nary a sniffle and yet, here I am. Moaning and groaning on my couch, pounding Advil-Schwepps cocktails, and wondering what the heck happened. I’m vaccinated and boosted and, apart from my stupid shoulder and occasional incontinence, basically invincible. This wasn’t in my spring 2022 script!
And now I’m missing all sorts of big stuff – my oldest’s graduation, my youngest’s prom and my 36th eighth-grade reunion, which I was super pumped about. We only graduated with 18 kids in our class and most I haven’t seen since the late ‘80s. Does Kelly still have bangs? What happened to Creighton and Jonathan and Jenny D? Who remembers the boys urinating on the side of the second-grade classroom that one day during recess? Good times. Gooood times. But I digress.
My quarantine is also occurring during the last month of school, which any educator will tell you are the absolute worst weeks to be gone. Final projects, make-up work and end-of-the-year paraphernalia don’t always proceed smoothly when I’m there, let alone with substitutes. Ugh! Who did this to me?
Probably a student, but maybe someone from my scuba class. I was, after all, sharing respirator spit with a veritable stranger for several hours. Or more likely, it was the universe, recognizing that if I wasn’t going to clear my over-scheduled and anxiety-provoking May calendar, she certainly would. The mystery will probably never be solved, and I suppose in the end, it doesn’t really matter
My name is Danielle, and I have COVID-19. Son of a biscuit.
Peace out.
