Time of Online Connections

By Ruohan, age 9

“We can’t go out. It’s a shelter in place.” The TV roared. I didn’t really take notice of it. But soon, I realized. “I can’t have playdates with my friends,” I realized. “You do ballet on Zoom.” My mom said, taking no notice. After ballet, I had an idea. “That’s it!” I said to myself. “Zoom. I’ll do zoom with my friends. But after another while, we started working on a story. I was on screen all the time. What else was there to do, but computer and read? My basic daily schedule was this: morning, homework, afternoon, read, night, computer. 

But anyway, my friends discovered another way to connect without Zoom. Chat, on the Google docs. Our story got longer and longer. “Maybe,” I thought, “Maybe I’ll grow up to be a writer! Or  teacher? They read a lot, too.” Today, our story is 977 pages long. At that time, my family was pretty mixed up. Not always a fun time. I also had a new baby sister, so that was new. For me, covid-19 wasn’t always so fun. Covid times, for me, were messy and crazy. Now with the use of masks, it isn’t that crazy.