Day 74:

    Today was bittersweet.  It's the last day of school.  The beginning of summer.  The end of the school year.  It doesn't feel like it.  School is usually concluded with a stressful week on studying and testing and an intense sense of relief after your last test, followed by pool parties and sleepovers, the excitement of summer beginning.

    There is no excitement of summer.  Lack of school simply means lack of useful things to do.  There is no swim team, no camps, no church or volunteering.  Instead of a fun pool party concluding a long and stressful school year, my friends and I sat in a grocery store parking lot six feet apart, watching the fireworks set off for the class of 2020.  Sitting in a dark parking lot while the light above us is trying to decide whether it is alive or dead is a new experience.  We sat and talked for hours, starved of seeing each other in person.  Touch-starved as well, but hugs are illegal.  We can't touch each other and share blankets for warmth.

     There are ribbons on all of the poles downtown the colors of the two high schools in my city.  All the signs declare "We Are Proud of the Class of 2020."  My school has a banner hanging on the front of the school with all of the senior's names on it.  It looks like a battle casualty list, the innocent teenage years, dances, games, and graduations all lost to a virus.

     There is no 2020 vision.