124 What a Blur it all Was.

Ace Winters

When covid first hit Canada I was in my public high school in Oakville Ontario. I was just entering my second semester of grade nine. I was just recently fourteen, having just celebrated my friend also turning 14 while also simultaneously mourning the loss of my grandmother. All we were told was that we were going to be getting a longer spring break, only it never really ended. We did not go back to school. We barely went outside of our houses, afraid of catching covid. Watching the news became a daily thing that we had never done before, watching the chaos unfold. I remember going grocery shopping with my dad before the first full lock down happened, the store looked like an apocalypse had hit. There were restrictions on how many things of toilet paper one person could get. I also remember getting home and making light of things by putting on a zombie apocalypse movie, it was definitely a choice and looking back it was insanely accurate on how we would feel in the near future.

Covid was a very weird time for me, a lot of the time spent in my room doing schoolwork, reading, drawing, dancing, writing. From time to time, when we were not in full lockdown, my friends and I would bike to an open field and have a little hangout. That was only during certain times though. The one friend I saw consistently when it was allowed, was my longest standing friend. I always made sure to be extra careful during this time to not catch even a cold because her mom was going through medical treatments at the time that made her immunocompromised and even a small cold would be severe for her. This meant that even when a small group of friends wanted to hang out, I wore a mask at all times. I got so used to wearing masks that I would keep a few in my bag just in case, even during my final year of high school when masking was not deemed mandatory. I also got used to doing the online check of if it was safe for me to go to school, having to also show the green check mark to my teacher as a form of attendance. I was carrying hand crème for the first time because of the amount of hand sanitizer I was using while out.

At first, virtual schooling was not really something that was put forward. I remember finishing my grade nine year through Google form submissions and Google messages. For the next two years though I did the whole full shut–down–virtual–schooling, and my school’s odd cohort system of only going in certain days for one class and having four semesters instead of two. Honestly though, for a lot of the time I was in virtual schooling, I rolled out of bed 5 minutes before class, made a coffee, and then read a book while my teacher was talking. A lot of that time is a blur, reading story after story, somehow getting honor role for all four years. Online schooling definitely messed up a lot of kids. We never really learned study methods until our final year or in post-secondary, there are kids I knew who would be swimming in their pool while in class, or baking something, or helping out with chores around the house. A lot of the time there was also the issue with boundaries as we were trapped in a house with people we usually only saw for a few hours every day. Parents were overstepping limits because of their child or teenager being right there and not respecting the fact that, regardless of the historical event that they were living through, their kids still had personal lives. At the same time people were missing out on major moments in life. I was lucky enough that things had been going back to the new normal for long enough for me to have a prom, but my sibling missed out on prom, having it be done terribly online through a Google Meet that maybe 10 people attended. Personally, I spent many summers that were meant to be spent with friends, exploring and making memories, but instead I was in my room reading, drawing on my walls, becoming my family’s hairdresser.

I remember many ads and posters telling people to get vaccinated during covid. Many saying to get vaccinated as soon as possible to not only protect yourself but others too. Around the same time there were also posters saying that hate has no home here appearing on people’s lawns. This came after a lot of hate and hate crimes against people of Asian descent as many people were saying that this was an Asian disease. Looking back into history this was all seen before: the posters telling people to get their whole families vaccinated, the stigma and hate behind the illness. It happened for smallpox, where people where absolutely terrified and had no idea what to do, watching the death rate increase. Then the vaccine is introduced, a solution and yet there was also push back. Some people saying they do not need it, while others are booking appointments as soon as they could. Then there is the stigma, if someone caught covid during a certain time people would assume that they broke the bubble rules and caught it during a large gathering – even though they could have easily caught it while grocery shopping. The shame that came with getting covid was a shame that you had to have done something deviant to get it. It sounds similar to the shame that people got during the Black Death, where becoming ill was seen as a punishment. There was also the hate that anyone of Asian descent faced. I had friends who were scared for their parents to go out alone, who themselves were afraid to leave their house as they thought someone would harm them. Some people in society had this belief that covid came from Asian people and that they needed to be punished. This was similar to how HIV/AIDS was believed to be a white gay man disease, which caused a lot of queer men to not come out or get tested which just spread it even more. People not testing for covid and then going about their days infected many people due to the fear of facing the hate and shame that came with it.

Covid was a weird time for the whole world, and things will never really go back to how it was before March of 2020. From full lock downs, to partial, from people having no time for hobbies to people having 5 and even making small businesses out of it. So much happened during that time, and yet when people ask what I did during that time it takes me a minute to even remember sections others lost to time and gone from my memory. All those months blurred together and forgotten.