How We Aged 16 Years During COVID

I have a theory. The pandemic has aged us, and not just in the way we might immediately think. Yes, we’re tired and we might have to dig deeper to find compassion and kindheartedness, but I think we collectively grew from babies to teenagers in 2020 and 2021. And here’s what I’m talking about.

In March of last year, we were mere newborns. Tucked in at home, in the mandated safety of our womb-like bubbles, we had few words to describe what was happening in our lives. We were attempting to understand the new language of the pandemic, but we weren’t getting it quite right. Social distancing? Huh? Perhaps the term physical distancing would have been easier to understand, but in the beginning, much of what we were attempting to absorb was confusing, babbling gobbledygook. You know that weird look babies get when they’re surprised about something—that face that precedes either a big toothless grin or a frowning howl and you don’t know which will happen until it does? Yeah, that’s how we all looked. It’s the universal baby face for WTF.

April and May flew by. Babies need their sleep, and we were able to get as much as we wanted. We could get up for a 7 a.m. feeding, go back to sleep, get up, play for a little while, read a book, watch cartoons, have another feeding, and sleep again. All while wearing our PJ onesies. Awesome, right? It was good to be a baby…we didn’t even have to take baths before bed every night because we were never out of bed long enough!

But then it got confusing. Stand here, stand there, don’t stand too close together, wash your hands, cover your mouth—so many new and sometimes contradictory rules for babies to digest. We hadn’t even achieved a good crawling technique and this was like we’d been baby-gated on the road to nowhere. We found it even more difficult to develop life skills when we couldn’t read others’ facial expressions behind their masks—talk about a developmental deficit—and we couldn’t reach out to hug and be hugged. That’s a basic developmental need. No wonder we all have abandonment issues.

But we grew.

Around June, we bloomed into toddlers. Our vocabulary exploded and we were experiencing life for the first time—nature, sunlight, the sounds of laughter from children across the street—it was fresh and exotic to us. We appreciated each new moment, each groundbreaking, tentative step we took.

But when we were in public, we were encouraged to look but not touch. Suddenly, we weren’t allowed to reach out and grasp at will. Right? When toddlers want to experience an apple, they want to touch it. In fact, they want to touch all the apples, and pick the shiniest, prettiest one. They might even want to lift it to their noses or lips and inhale all that apple-y goodness. Suddenly, we were getting scolding glares from fellow shoppers when we tried that. I swear, an old man in a scary mask almost slapped my chubby little fingers when I squeezed more than one avocado. Even throwing him my WTF baby face didn’t elicit a grin, at least I don’t think it did. His eyes were crinkled meanies.

There was good stuff though. Like toddlers, we pulled out our pots and pans and banged them together or hit them with wooden kitchen spoons. This time it wasn’t simply noisemaking, it was to show appreciation for our front-line workers. But c’mon, what little kid doesn’t like banging things together just to hear the noise they make? And now we were allowed—even encouraged—to do just that every evening before bedtime. Again, awe-some!!!

By summer we found out we weren’t in a wave. We didn’t really know what that meant, because we only seven and we were allowed to play in the waves at the lake, so it wasn’t that kind. The beach is endless fun for a seven-year-old, and it’s a great place to make summertime friends. Except that we had to draw an invisible line around ourselves in the water—maybe even get tucked inside a plastic floaty tube—to keep our distance from the other kids and bigger kids splashing about. Don’t touch other kids, we were told. Hey, if we pee in the water, can other people catch the COVIDS?

So summer was good. Being a kid. When we finally got to go places, our entire family played dress up, like, in real clothes that had zippers and buttons. We ALL got to take off our pajamas and most of us even had a bath.

When we learned we had to wear masks, we were so excited. My family picked superhero masks—Batman, Spiderman, Iron Man, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman. I was going to be Poison Ivy because green is my favorite color. Well, then we learned that they weren’t the fun plastic Halloween masks with holes for our eyes, nose, and mouth. These masks actually had to cover our entire mouths and our noses! Man! That was weird! We didn’t think the COVID masks were nearly as much fun as playing Batman and Robin but we did what we were told anyway. Because, you know, that’s what our parents made us do.

Fall progressed, and the thought of back to school was less fun than usual because we didn’t know if we were going to be with the other kids or at home with our family and dog. Being kids, there was so much we didn’t understand, and no one was making it any easier for us. 2020 should have come with its own instruction manual. Like Nintendo. Nintendo is easy but you have to know how to plug it in and use it. Anyway, the fun was sucked out of us again, because even without its instruction manual, 2020 wasn’t nearly as fun as even 2010 Nintendo games. We could beat the old games with our eyes closed but we couldn’t crack 2020. I don’t think anyone has been able to win that one.

Every time we went back to Real School (the building) it felt like we were the new kids all over again. Now we had to stand outside so that our teacher could zap us before we could enter. We were all the new kids, every time. Because it had been a long time since we’d seen each other except on Zoom and that wasn’t even like playing online games because it was school, and we couldn’t shout over each other. And even though we were having birthdays, we couldn’t even have pizza parties like when we were littler kids.

Months passed in suspended animation, like when you hit pause on Minecraft just before Evil Steve kills you and then you get called to the dinner table. You know that after you eat Evil Steve will still be waiting. Anyway, we became 14-year-olds. We’re sullen, we’re cynical, we mouth off, challenge rules, and even break some. We hate home cooking, so we get takeout four times a week. We eat cereal at midnight, dry and directly from the box, and we leave the empty box on the coffee table in the family room.

Some of us have curfews now, which does not go over well. So not cool. It’s bad enough that we can’t hang out with our friends, but now we have to be home before 8 p.m.? Yeah, no. It’s not like we have to get up to go to school. School is the laptop on my bed. Duh. Another stoopid rule.

We want to stand in front of our lockers and be idiots. Together and in person. But we can’t even play basketball or try out for the track team. Being a teenager right now bites the big one. School’s messed up: we get to go back, but then the COVID alarm sounds, and we’re back at home doing school work, so what, pray tell, is homework? Is all schoolwork homework now?

And speaking of being home, what’s this about offices allowing their employees to work remotely? This isn’t remotely cool—I mean, if our parents are home how can we blast Lil Baby and Young Thug from our laptops when we’re supposed to be reviewing algebra and calculus? Note to parents: Please. Go. Back. To. The. Office.

Yeah, we’re too lazy to cook or do our laundry or clean our rooms. So what, who cares. Why bother? Can you see us pouting behind our masks? Well, we are. Doesn’t matter if we make our beds or pick up our dirty dishes. Our friends can’t come over anyway.