Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists

Diary Of A Locked Kid By Alice Pak, 10 It all started on Thursday, March 12th. At my Jungle Book Musical practice, my teacher, Mrs. Frost, had some news to share. She looked around, a very sorrowful expression on her face, and then murmured something to another teacher. The other teacher’s face also fell into a frown, but she called us to gather around. As we gathered around Mrs. Frost, she took a deep breath and said, “Students, I know this is going to shock you, and you are probably going to be VERY sad, but I have to tell this to you now. We are going to have a school lockdown for three weeks, and it starts tomorrow.” There was a stunned silence. Then one of the students nervously raised her hand, and asked what a lockdown was. It was obvious that Mrs. Frost was not very comfortable with the topic, but she explained that a lockdown was when a social place was closed, for example, our school, and nobody attended it for a few weeks. In our case, three weeks. She also said that we would have online learning, on our chromebooks. Now, everyone was thinking about another thing; they would not be able to see their friends! Some people burst into tears. Some had sad expressions engraved on their faces. Others still looked confused and puzzled. But nobody was happy, even though that meant missing school. Thursday, March 12th, evening When I came home from school that day, I burst into tears. I didn’t want school to end, even if it was temporary! It was so fun at school! All the crafts, books, projects, and other fun activities would have to end. All because that cruel little virus! All because of him, school had to end! I was very upset, so it took my parents a couple of minutes to calm me down. I was very unhappy about the school lockdown, and even if it was not forever. Tonight I went to bed, thinking about what I should tell our friends, because they didn’t know yet. Friday, March 13th Today at school we had our Jungle Book Musical. It turned out to be quite magnificent; the audience was constantly laughing and commenting. The cast was also amused sometimes, and they chuckled lightly. The staff loved it also. I was having so much fun, I even forgot about the lockdown… for a while. But when we were back in our classes, and my math teacher handed me a pack of homework, I remembered about it, and went back to my gloomy self. When school ended, and I was saying bye to my friends, I realized how much the coronavirus has changed in this world… even if it wasn’t a good thing. Saturday, March 14th I woke up, and remembered what day it was. The first day of Break! That thought stirred some sadness and excitement in me. My mom went around the corner, and smiling at me she said, “ here you are! Happy first day of Break! I have something for you.” She handed me a suitcase-like box. I opened it and saw that it contained a machine that seemed to be able to do something. After a minute of further inspection, I found out that it was called a KumiKreator, and that it braided bracelets. Now that was something! I quickly mastered the KumiKreator, and started making bracelets. The machine would quickly make the threads trade places in a specific order; then, when the bracelet was done, the machine clicked three red lines together, and you had to take off the finished bracelet and put on the clips and… Magnifique! I made four, and they came out fantastically! My break seemed not to be that bad, so far. Sunday, March 15th Today, I was ready to have a fresh start on my day. Now, my sadness was slowly melting into eagerness and possibilities. I ate up my breakfast and then we decided to go to a Turkish Marketplace called U.S International Foods, which also contained Russian food, which we loved. We bought a lot of Russian and Turkish food like sausages called “Kolbasa”, different fish, Russian saltless pretzels called “Bubliki”, Turkish bread called “Lavash”, candy, chocolates, and mouth-watering Russian ice cream. As soon as we were out of the shop, we each took an ice cream and ate it all up. Then when we arrived home, we took on the hard job of loading up our refrigerator. Then we ate our soup, and went to Gerspacher Park. We played there for a while, and then went back to our house, and went to sleep. What a great day it was! Monday, March 16th Today I felt a bit unsure about staying at home. Even though I knew that we were having a lockdown, I was so used to going to school. Instead, I decided to play the piano. I sat down at our beautiful black “ Pearl River” and started to play all I knew. First I played my small jazz program, then I played “Lady green Sleeves”, followed by Ronda, Minuet, and my Sonatina. I managed to play all 5 pages of the Sonatina! It was very pleasant. My mom is my music teacher: she taught me all of that. My dad played the piano too, so after I finished playing, he sat down and played his music; two of his Waltzes, Nocturne in E flat, another Nocturne by Chopin, Mazurka in A minor, and a French Tango to rival me. Of course, neither was better than the other, so we gave up on our music competition. But my mom enjoyed telling us, especially my dad, that we were playing the wrong note. Tuesday, March 17th Today I already got used to the fact that I was not going to school for a few weeks. Instead, I busied myself with the opportunity to make so many arts and crafts during this “off school time”.