In late January my aunt returned to the US from Vietnam with a checked box containing over a hundred boxes of surgical face masks. She was freaking out about some virus that began in China and spread very quickly and very easily. I reacted by saying something along the lines of “oh okay, cool” and went on about my life as a free and naive American. Flash forward 2 months, and “whoa.” turns out she was absolutely right. Before I knew it, the restaurant I was working at laid everyone off, my sisters were sent home from school to their early summer vacation, and the entire world just seemed to stop. We were all stuck together in quarantine.
It’s true, this virus was the next big thing, and it would be for a very very long time. However, I believe something extraordinary that affects everyone becomes ordinary becomes ordinary very quickly. Yes, the virus changed the methods in which we spoke to each other, and the mediums which we used to do so; I believe how we spoke to each other was greatly influenced by the civil rights movements that had to be set into motion this year.
