By Henry Pincus '22
On March 15th of last year, the entire world went under lockdown due to the uncontrollable spread of COVID-19. Three days after that started, I had my sixteenth birthday. As you'd expect, it was pretty underwhelming compared to my past birthdays, which is saying a lot considering that I usually just have dinner with my friends anyway. I wouldn't say I like doing anything really fancy, but that birthday was pretty lukewarm, even by my standards. It just felt like another day.
March 18th of 2021 marked my seventeenth birthday. We're still in quarantine. Things are better than they were, but we're not back to normal yet. Everyone had at least one COVID birthday, but this marked my second one. So what's that like?
If I had to choose one word to describe the feeling, I'd say "surreal" sums it up pretty neatly. It doesn't particularly bother me, but it's bizarre to think about. Having two birthdays under lockdown made me realize that I spent my entire sixteenth year of life inside. Obviously, everyone in America (everyone sane, anyway) has been social distancing for just over a year now, but I don't think that truly has sunk in until now.
I was talking to my dad about that, and I said that sixteen was one of my least memorable years. Then I thought for a moment and realized, "Well, duh, every day was essentially the same thing."
I'm not really sure how to feel about having another birthday like that. Again, I don't have any strong feelings about it. It isn't a big deal, and I'd feel silly if I pretended it was. But it puts the past year or so into perspective for me. Looking back, 2020 felt so long, yet I have barely any memories from the year. It feels like I turned sixteen last week.
I guess that's the general theme of quarantine: every memory of the past year felt like it happened a week ago, and then there was a giant void in the middle, and now I'm seventeen.
So, yeah. "Surreal" is what it feels like to do this twice.
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