Time is free, but priceless

I will never forget the day, Friday, March 13, 2020. This is the day, the world shut down, in my case, the last day I was in school with my friends and peers. It wasn’t a normal day either, a normal school day used to be getting up at six o’ clock in the morning, stumble out of bed, arrive at school and go throughout my day half asleep. But that Friday was different, rumors started going around that they would close down the schools, and we would go full remote. Nobody knew what was going to happen but my teachers were preparing us. For what? We had no idea. We did absolutely no work that day, other than the teachers walking us through google classroom, and other websites we were to go on if our school went remote. Teachers were scrambling to pack their stuff up, for the rumored two week virtual learning. By the time school ended, all these kids were saying goodbye to their friends, hugging them, saying, “see you in two weeks, don’t let the rona get you”. Kids were cracking jobs about this deadly virus because nobody knew how severe it was going to get in a day or so. That Saturday, I decided to go to the mall because my Dad said who knows the next you’ll be able to go to stores. By the time I got home from my shopping trip, we received a call from my school that said it would be closed until further notice. That’s how my freshman year of high school remained… Starting high school was supposed to be fun and I would have these memories with my friends that I could tell my children one day. But the saddest thing is, all my memories of high school are me at home, staring at my computer screen. And that made me think about the six months I was in school, hanging out with my friends. I took that for granted, that was normal. I used to see my friends everyday at lunch or bump into them in the halls. Now I’m lucky if we can even see each other, social distancing, staying six feet apart, wearing masks. So what I have to say is, time is precious, we may take it for granted but just stop and cherish the memories you have, time may be free but it is priceless.