Item

Leaving the House After 4 Months of Quarantine

Title (Dublin Core)

Leaving the House After 4 Months of Quarantine

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

Leaving the house in this climate has been an event and a half each and every time it happens. You really begin to take it for granted- all those months in quarantine and not seeing the outside world really does do numbers on your perception of what is real and fake, as odd as it sounds. Everything changes when you’re deprived of something for so long.

I remember the first time I left the house. It was my family and me- we were leaving to go to my Grandma’s house, I think, and this was four to five months into quarantine. Prior to this, I haven’t been past my backyard for the past half a year. I’ve never been a big outdoorsy person, so there was no reason to really leave my house the entire time. So my family drags us all out to go and see my Grandma, who has been doing somewhat meh recently. We get ready, take showers, the whole shebang.

I remember seeing trees again. You’d think that oh, seeing trees is completely normal, it’s something we see on a daily basis. But the difference between seeing them through my bedroom window and in real life was honestly kind of shell shocking. I spent the entire car ride just watching outside the window and absorbing the world back in. It seemed so much greener than before’ I’m not sure if that’s because no one has been outside and that helps the environment, or if it’s just been so long since I saw plants that it almost seemed unreal.

The smell, too, oh my god. I forgot how the outdoors kind of vaguely smells like plants all the time depending on where you are, but the area near my grandma's house smelled exactly like flowering trees. My family were all laughing seeing my reactions because it seemed so odd, but honestly, it genuinely shocked me. You don’t realize how much you take for granted until it’s ripped away from you, after all. They’ve been able to leave the house, but I haven’t, so of course I’m going to be super confused and astounded.

But yes. Was a weird experience. Trees really did look greener back then and the world seemed so new- it’s weird to think about since it’s not something people think about often or re-evaluate. After all, it’s something that’s meant to melt into the background, since people have more to focus on than trees passing by on the highway or the smell they make.

Date (Dublin Core)

October 26, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Lucas Weed

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Lucas Weed

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

AmericanStudies

Partner (Dublin Core)

California High School
San Ramon Valley Unified School District

Type (Dublin Core)

story

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Education--K12
English Health & Wellness
English Home & Family Life

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

US history
sensory history
California
grandmother
outside
tree
quarantine
highway

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

San Francisco Bay Area
sensory history
quarantine
slice of life

Collection (Dublin Core)

K-12
San Francisco Bay Area

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory History & COVID-19, Lesson Plan

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

10/26/2020

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

11/21/2020
03/31/2021
10/16/2023
11/12/2023

Date Created (Dublin Core)

10/26/2020

Item sets

Covid 19
High School

This item was submitted on October 26, 2020 by Lucas Weed using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://www.covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

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