"Who Are These Parents?" - As COVID-19 Cases Soar, America's Teenaged 'Covidiots' Still Aren't Obeying Quarantine Orders
Looking back, the fact that most Americans went about their daily lives as if nothing was happening for most of February - heeding the official advice of mayors including NYC's Bill de Blasio and others - seems almost unconscionable. All the while, COVID-19 was spreading, unseen, among communities in suburban Seattle, and in NYC and the suburban areas surrounding the city.
And yet, even after colleges around the country cancelled classes or converted to all-digital learning, hundreds of thousands of "Covidiot" teenagers and early twentysomethings were still hell-bent on capitalizing on cheap flights and enjoying the extended spring break of their dreams, public welfare be damned.
Many of these selfishly ignorant teenagers helped spread the virus around the country, as studies have now shown. But sadly, the ignorance of American teenagers - and the at-times depressing impotence of parents struggling to 'civilize' them - apparently knows no bounds. Because the Washington Post's 'society' section just ran a story about parents trying to cope with teenagers who are almost pathologically incapable of staying at home and doing nothing.
The reporter told the story of one suburban Virginia mom with an undisclosed medical condition that has left her immunocompromised. Despite this, her 18-year-old son insists on going out and meeting up with "his boys" - fellow high-school-senior-age teenagers who have built a fort in the nearby woods where they go to violate the newfound strictures of society.
For two weeks now, since Loudoun County closed its schools March 12, Julian has been building a fort near the Potomac River with “my boys,” he says, about two dozen seniors who show up randomly, bringing free pallets of wood they’ve spotted on Craigslist and building supplies from Home Depot. Rather than socially distancing, they’ve hammered away for hours before grilling hot dogs and fish they catch in a nearby pond and huddling together “to chill."
Julian arrived first to the clearing Thursday and offered a tour of the fort, which rose from the wooded landscape like a hermit’s dream with its frame of poles set in quick cement, covered by a blue tarp to keep out the rain. In recent days, the crowd had been dwindling as news of the coronavirus contagion grew more alarming and parents began putting their collective feet down.
Many teens in the Washington region and across the country are gradually moving past anger and depression to acceptance, at least for the time being, as they grieve the social losses that come with self-quarantining. But Julian — his mother wanted his last name withheld to protect his privacy — is stuck in denial.
His mother fights back with an endless barrage of "sticky note" reminders encouraging her son to wash his hands for more than 20 seconds and to take other steps to protect the family from being sickened by the careless actions of their ungrateful teenage child.
Julian knows he is supposed to keep his distance from his mother, who takes a medication that compromises her immune system. He calls her concerns “100 percent valid,” and said “it freaked me out” when she recently had a small cold. Even so, he sheepishly tries to duck into her space.
“Staying six feet apart from my mom is hard,” Julian says. “I like to go up and hug her all the time."
As for Elisa’s written reminders, “As soon as I walk in, I get hit in the face with a sticky note,” Julian says. “You can’t grab something in the kitchen without a sticky note in your face."
He seems more amused than annoyed; again, he understands. Still, “it’s hard to get in the habit of washing my hands literally after everything I touch,” he says.
No such rules apply at “Coronavirus Outpost,” the name he has given his communal fort in the woods.
Maybe these kids will remember the coronavirus as their big struggle, their "World War II" as it were. Though, given the tendency to accept and embellish unpleasant experiences into "traumas", we imagine that American teens will use this as one more excuse why the government owes them every handout imaginable, from paying off their student loans to covering health-care costs for life.
One mom wondered why some parents were still allowing kids to have group sleepovers and other social events when the governor had expressly forbade gatherings of more than 5.
Kelly Davis was willing to take a hit when her 14-year-old daughter, Victoria, begged to go to a sleepover at a friend’s house. Victoria, a competitive gymnast and straight-A student who Davis calls “the love of my life,” pled with her mother. “Why can’t I go?” she demanded, as her friends watched raptly on FaceTime.
“First, I made her get off FaceTime,” recounted Davis, 52, a single mom and special education teacher in Elkhart, Ind. “I said, ‘No,Victoria.’ I really don’t care what other parents are doing,” She pulled the “grandmother card,” because Davis’s 84-year-old mother lives with them.
Still, Davis finds herself resenting other parents. After the sleepover smackdown, another friend invited Victoria to a birthday party.
“Who are these parents?” she asked. “... It’s hard when other parents aren’t doing the right thing. It makes me look like the mean mom."
Kim Baxter was able to forge alliances with other parents so her 17-year-old daughter, Charlotte, a senior at Yorktown High in Arlington, could spend time with friends during the pandemic. Outside, of course, and the requisite six feet apart.
It did not go well.
Charlotte unwittingly texted her mother a photo while the foursome were out hiking. “They weren’t keeping any kind of distance,” Baxter, a 51-year-old attorney, said ruefully.
She later declined on Charlotte’s behalf when the mother of her daughter’s boyfriend and two other parents jointly approved a group camping trip. “The boys are Eagle Scouts and so that wasn’t my concern,” she said. “It was just the close proximity of what they were doing."
Charlotte “had a moment,” then that moment passed. Now Charlotte and her boyfriend are allowed to hang out at each others’ houses.
"I’ve met his mom, and we’ve been texting,” Baxter said. "I think we both kind of agreed that these two are pretty tight and it would probably be unhealthy to separate them."
These aren't the first reports of American teenagers not taking the quarantine seriously. Oddly, the young's seeming unwillingness to accept that they truly are vulnerable has led to them catching the disease in larger numbers since they're more likely to recklessly ignore quarantine advice.
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