Welcome to the Tweet Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweet Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Hey there, Tweet Trends friends. Today I want to talk about a year ago today. Let's get started.
If you would, please take a walk with me down memory lane. I want to go back a year ago. I want to take you to this one day in particular. And that's March 13, 2020, also known as Friday the 13th.
We receive a phone call from the school district. Now it's not a personal call. It's not a call directly to us. It's one of those automated calls.
But in this automated call, it lets us know that starting on March 16, a year from today, that school would be canceled for the next two weeks due to this thing called COVID-19. And then the rest of the story plays on, you know? Because then from a year ago today, March 16, the following week, March 23, that next Monday, is when the governor puts out that, you know what? We don't even need to go through this two week trial period.
School is canceled for the rest of the school year. Now, as a parent, I've never gone through a situation like this before. No one's ever had to explain to me why school was being canceled. So I really didn't have the tools in my toolbox to explain to my child that school is no more for the rest of the school year.
You're not going to see your friends like you normally do on the bus, at school, in class, none of that. You're not going to get to see your teacher. And trying to be positive about it, trying to uplift her spirits, because she was devastated. And so was I, you know, to an extent, because I really didn't know what to expect.
So I went into mommy survival mode. We immediately started homeschool type situation. I did not want her to get out of that habit of the Monday through Friday. We're going to learn stuff.
And then Saturday, Sunday, we do stuff with a family. I didn't want her to get away from that routine. So that's what we did. Now, I look at this particular situation, and I try to think back, like, was there anything that I've been through that is remotely similar to this?
And the only thing I could think of was 9-11. Now, there was a 2008 financial crisis, but I don't feel like it hit, like, what COVID-19 did. So now, 9-11 was traumatic. There were a series of events that took place that reshaped society, it reshaped the way that people viewed things, the way that they moved about in their surroundings.
However, as bad as 9-11 was, I don't think it can hold a candle to COVID-19 in this experience that we've all had for this past year. Because think about it. If you picture in your mind the map of the United States, and you think about the key hard hit places for 9-11, you've got a drop in New York in a wave, a ripple, radiating out from there. And you've got another ripple coming out of the DC area.
And so there are those two places, and yes, people were heartbroken, people were upset, people were shook, because we are Americans. This is America, and who comes to our soil and causes such chaos and confusion. But then, with COVID-19, picture that same map. Now, as far as I know, there isn't a single state that has not seen the death and destruction created by the coronavirus.
I don't know that there's a single state that has not been touched. If there is one, I haven't heard of it to this date. So you picture that same date, that date. You picture that same map.
And just like I was talking about a drop in the water in New York and DC area, and how that ripple effect would come across the United States that way, drop one for each of the 50 states. Drop it in there and look at how those ripples, just its chaos. And that is what has taken place. Now, I didn't think about 911 and what it was doing to me and the people around me in the moment.
Looking back on it, I can see how I moved differently. I was more aware of things. And so going into the COVID-19 situation, I really wasn't looking or thinking about what is it going to look like when I reflect back on it? I was in survival mode.
All right, how do we do this? How do we keep from getting sick? Because having a young child, I'm telling you, that is a challenge because kids catch everything, because everything goes in their mouth, their nose, their eyes, if there's a germ to be caught, a kid will find a way to catch it. And so the fact that they were shutting the schools down, I was grateful for that.
Because if not, I was going to be that mom pulling my kid out of school and be like, you know what? Y'all get y'all stuff together. And then once that's straight, then my child can come back, which is where I am now. All those schools have opened back up and they have limited numbers and whatnot.
I was one that opted to keep my child at home. And the reason being, as a steward of one of God's most precious possessions, I could not see it in my heart, in my mind, in my spirit to send my child back to school knowing that I can keep her here at the house and we can still get work done. Now do I feel any type of way about people who sent their kids back? No, because that's their cross the bear.
That's their thing. That's their decision to make. God didn't put me in charge of their children. He put me in charge of mine.
And I have to do for mine what I know is best according to what my thoughts and feelings are. I can't feel any type of way about another parent and what they've decided to do. You know, it's one of those do-you-boo moments. Like if you like it, I love it.
Go right on ahead. And you know, I pray for your family just like I pray for my own because I pray that we all get through this in one piece. Thinking back to other situations that I've gone through in my life, growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, we had to deal with natural disasters on the regular. We call those things hurricanes, right?
And so one hurricane in particular, Hurricane Hugo was absolutely devastating to our area. And in that crisis, people came together and they worked with each other and they did what they had to do. So prior to that, everybody was in their own little bubble. It was me, my, mine.
Nobody was really checking for each other. But when Hugo came through and turned everything upside down on his head, people came together in neighborhoods. They would, if I had the charcoal and you had the grill, then guess what? We were eating good because all that stuff that was defrosting in our freezers because we had no electricity.
We had to eat that stuff. We had to eat it before I went back. So I look at situations like that and I think about COVID-19 and in my mind, it says we should all be coming together. Everyone should be coming together to fight this thing because just like Hurricane Hugo was, I think we could not control COVID-19 is a thing we cannot control.
We cannot control this thing. We can do what we can to slow it down. But there's no one COVID thing entity that you can grab it by the neck and shake it. We can't do that.
So we have to, we have to be a little bit smarter in the way that we navigate around this particular situation. But because that me, my mind type mindset is still stuck in some people, you can't convince some people that wearing a mask is going to help the greater good. You know, it's been explained that if I wear my mask, then I protect you. And so it's people like me.
I'm diligent about wearing my mask, but I tell you when I go out in the streets and I see someone who is not wearing a mask, I feel some type of way about it. Because to me that says you don't have any respect for me or anybody else. You have a me, my mind type of mindset. Now, are there people out there in society that cannot wear a mask for certain reasons or whatever?
I'm sure there are. Have I seen some of them? I probably have. But I can probably bet too that a lot of the people that I have seen that haven't been wearing them, they just do it because they don't want to.
They feel privileged that they shouldn't have to because they're an American. And I cannot, I struggle with that whole mindset that I'm so stuck on myself. I'm so self-absorbed. It's all about me.
I don't care about you, whatever you think, how you feel. I struggle with that mindset because it's things like that that are keeping this virus around so much longer. And I'm not making this up. This is stuff that doctors are saying.
Now, as an educator, if a doctor came into my classroom and tried to tell me how I need to be teaching math, you know what? Talk to the hand. But in the same way, I can't go into the hospitals and tell the doctor how to operate because that's his turf. That's his or her thing.
That's their verb. That's what they do. They understand that kind of stuff. So when it's their lane to be in and they're given the directives, guess what?
We need to follow, see them follow along. Now if it comes out later on years down the road that it didn't matter, guess what? We were better safe than sorry. Thank you for hearing me and taking this walk down memory lane with me.
I just wanted to kind of look at where we were, where we currently are, and just to try to dream and imagine where we're headed because we're still not out of the woods, y'all. We still have a ways to go just because there is a vaccine out there contrary to popular belief, it does not mean that you get the shot and then you get to go free. You still need to do your distancing. You still need to wear your masks because let me just ask the question, how long is your vaccine good for?
Do you even know that? Exactly. So before you get to thinking that it's business as usual just because you've got a shot, there's still a lot of stuff to figure out. Now there are some things that we have figured out and some things that are still in the works.
Like to me, I think education is still in the works, although we're not seeing a whole lot change, there needs to be changed because there's a talk about the students that are already behind, what is that going to do to them? Especially considering that if you look into the schools in your area, you may be surprised to find out what percentage of children are actually taking part in these actual school classes. Like there are some that are going face to face, there are some that are virtual, and then there are some that don't have access. And so it's all of those types of things that we have to keep in mind when it comes to being social, having to rethink what we do and how we do it.
I'm not even going to lie, I have thoroughly enjoyed using virtual means to have functions with people to get together. My husband and I, we're now known as the social media fund family because we are always doing something virtual, planning a party for our relatives or friends or sipping socials and things like that where we're pulling people together because rather than not doing anything, not engaging people, we want people to be engaged because humans, just human nature, we are meant to be with, we're not meant to be alone. And because of that, we are trying to foster that among the friends and even people that we don't know, we had one not too long ago where we put it on Eventbrite. It was a free function, we played a game and people came from far and wide that we've never met before and it was one of those things like you know what, and because of COVID, we were able to meet new people.
How cool is that? So like I said, it's a look back to see where we've been, to find out where we are and to just kind of imagine what's next. Thank you so much for taking that walk down memory lane with me today. I really appreciate it.
And you know something else I'd really appreciate? If you would go to whatever platform it is that you listen to this podcast on and give me a rating, that would be greatly appreciated. Please and thank you. Now other than that, in the meanwhile, I hope that you would continue to stay safe, stay smart and stay up to date with what is going on and what is trending by listening to Tweet Trends.