Barbara’s Bulletin #8: Disturbing if True

 Today while I was at work, dealing with a last minute call out and thinking of all the things that weren’t getting done, Bob texted me. He was worried about something disturbing that Adam had said and he wanted to fill me in right away. Apparently yesterday while Adam’s class was “galloping” around the track a little girl started coughing. She sat in the dirt and coughed until the teacher took her inside and Adam hasn’t seen her since.

            It’s not always easy to get Adam to tell us what goes on while he’s at school. I take whatever little bits of information I can get from him. I know that on his first day of school they watched a video about a dinosaur going to school for the very first time and on the second day of school juice spilled out of his juice box and it was falling like rain. This was the first time that Adam really told us a full story about what happened at school. He told us that the girl had pigtails in her hair and was wearing her mask. Then she sat in the dirt and coughed until the teacher took her away and then he went to sleep and when he woke up she was still gone, which we took to mean the next day she wasn’t back in school.

            So what should Bob and I make of this story? I didn’t want to press Adam too much and I didn’t want to call the school to ask them about someone coughing. I don’t want to be pegged as an alarmist. I even told Bob that not all coughs are covid coughs; she could have been having an asthma attack. And even if she did take a day off from school, that doesn’t necessarily point to her having covid. 

            I originally decided not to worry about it but then I opened Adam’s backpack and inside was a huge packet with a sticky note attached to it, which read this is an emergency packet in case of sudden school closure; please store in a safe place. I started to think back to what happened back in March with Bob’s job. First Bob was told that work from home measures were being put in place in the following few weeks. Then, suddenly, they told everyone in his building that they had to start working from home right away. Once everyone was already working from home they sent out an emailing informing everyone that someone in the building did test positive for covid. I wondered if the school was about to pull something similar.

            I have to be real with you right now and say that I don’t really have much of a game plan if school shuts down. I worry that if I have to home school Adam it will go well at first and then slowly fall by the wayside. For the moment I am hoping that school stays open until the workmen are finished installing the sprinklers in our apartment but I doubt I’ll get that lucky.

            Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

            XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

            Babs