The news is filled with story after story of communities preparing for coronavirus outbreaks and possible quarantines or shortages. You can’t buy a face mask on the black market for less than a couple thousand dollars and people are stockpiling products manufactured in China so they don’t have to wake up without their morning Diet Coke.
The CDC says, “Community-based interventions such as school dismissals, event cancellations, social distancing, and creating employee plans to work remotely can help slow the spread of COVID-19.” Is ‘social distancing’ the same as personal space? Is the CDC telling everyone to be sure they aren’t ‘close talkers’? While that’s just solid advice—I’m not sure what it means for us that the CDC sounds like a 30-year-old episode of Seinfeld.
Not to minimize the seriousness of the coronavirus—but there is a more imminent outbreak on the horizon for my family that is more real to me, at this point, because I have lived through one before. The Spring Break Children are coming.
Spring Break Children are like regular children, but worse. They know that they have a week of freedom from school and plan to squeeze all the fun into it that they can. The freedom makes them giddy; the time limit of a week makes them manic. This means crafts, snacks, experiments, newly devised games that take longer to assemble random items for than it takes them to actually play them, more snacks, forts that use all the linens in the house and knock over at least one lamp, projects they abandon mid-execution, and then more snacks. Time to stock up on supplies.
Oddly enough, preparation tips for a global pandemic double as great advice for surviving an invasion of Spring Break Children as well. The Boston Herald published a list of preparedness tips for making it through a ‘pandemic shelter-in-place’ order and, with very few tweaks, I’ve applied it to handling Spring Break Children as well:
•Buy enough food and water so you can shelter at home for at least two weeks.
I have four children and an assortment of neighborhood rug rats who will be in and out of my house every day of Spring Break—two weeks’ worth of food won’t cut it, but my pantry can’t hold much more. I will end up back at the grocery, repeatedly. This is not a problem as it will provide a brief escape from the Spring Break Children and their projects and plans and demands.
•Make sure you have nonperishable foods that do not need cooking, including ready-to-eat canned meats, protein or granola bars, cereal, peanut butter, dried fruit, nuts, and crackers.
I purchase mostly non-perishable items that don’t need cooking because—they don’t need cooking, not because they need to last a long time. A box of granola bars or fruit chews don’t last the afternoon in my house. A while back, I was so tired of my kids eating all the individually wrapped snacks in a day or two—leaving me none to pack in their lunches—that I decided to do something about it. I bought a heavy-duty toolbox and a combination lock to hide—some might say, hoard—the snacks that are supposed to be reserved for their lunches. I dumped all the Goldfish bags and fruit chew packets and granola bars in the toolbox, secured the combination lock on the latch and patted myself on the back.
I was feeling so smug about having outsmarted my kids that I posted a picture of my parenting hack on Facebook. While I was being hailed a genius in the comments on my post, my youngest daughter wriggled her little hand inside the toolbox like some urban marsupial might with a locked garbage can. She was snacking on a chewy, chocolate chip granola bar in under a minute. I added a video of her outmaneuvering me to my Facebook post, admitting my defeat, and I still haven’t figured out how to keep them from depleting my stock of snacks too quickly. They know all my hiding places and I’m fresh out of ‘genius ideas.’
•Make sure you have a working can opener for items like beans, corn and Spam.
I mean—this just seems like good advice for life, but also at some point, a manual can opener may be the only thing in your house that your kids can’t operate without your help, so enjoy it. (Or buy a Walkman and completely blow their minds.)
•Stock up on extra prescription drugs and medications. Get any nonprescription drugs, including pain relievers, cough and cold medicines, and vitamins. Prepare a first-aid kit.
Spring Break is not the time to run out of prescription meds any more than a global pandemic is. Refill now and replenish your stock of band aids while you’re at it. Somebody will bleed at some point and you don’t want to find yourself left with nothing but Olaf band aids when you really need an Elsa to make the screaming stop. Also, their noses might get a little runny—probably the pollen—no judgment here if they need just a little Benadryl at bedtime…
•Load up on cleaning products, such as toilet paper, soap, detergent, and hand sanitizer. Also, make sure you have enough personal hygiene items.
Somebody will spill something, or puke, or miss—don’t skimp on the cleaning products. Spring Break means no uniforms, so the laundry will pile up quickly, especially if you have a kid that requires a strictly enforced daily limit for outfit changes. Don’t run out of detergent or they’ll be wearing swimsuit bottoms as underwear in no time at all.
They say washing your hands frequently is the best protection against the coronavirus. Same goes for that sticky stuff on your toddler’s hand and the smear on your preschooler’s shirt. Don’t investigate—you don’t want to know—just travel with wet-wipes and hand sanitizer and make sure they can reach the soap on the bathroom counter at home.
•Have enough diapers, wipes, baby food and formula on hand if that’s needed.
But if you don’t—it’s best for your marriage if you flip a coin or play paper/rock/scissors to decide who gets to leave mid-witching hour to get more.
•Pet owners need to stock up on pet food and supplies.
There’s a good chance Spring Break Children will cause you to forget to feed your pet at least once; buy treats to apologize now. Also, set rules for what can and can’t be done to the dog regarding dress-up. Sunglasses are okay, but hair chalk is a bad idea—trust me.
•Gather copies of health records from doctors. Other important documents to have on hand are insurance policies, bank account records and identification cards.
If you make it through Spring Break without having to provide your insurance card and driver’s license at a counter with a sliding glass window—call it a success. But make sure you’ve got that all on hand just in case.
Once upon a time—many moons and several children ago—the words ‘spring break’ and ‘corona’ went together to me for very different reasons. Maybe I’ll add limes to my grocery list and sit in a beach chair in the driveway with a Corona and the water hose to teach the kids what ‘social distancing’ is while I try to think of better ways to hoard food in the event of shortages and school lunch packing. Who knew parenting was such good training for global pandemic preparedness?
Elizabeth Quinn makes her home in Northeast Jackson with her husband Percy and four children.
