Reading/ Life As We Knew It

This week, my mom has been bothering me about being lazy and losing motivation, which is very true, towards school and my education. Instead of getting in an argument about it, I decided to just pick up a book and read to prove her wrong. Luckily, the random book I picked ended up being super interesting. Life as we know it is a book by Susan Beth Pfeffer about a large-scale event that changes the whole world and "life as we know it". Sound familiar. The horrific event involves an asteroid hitting our moon which causes it to draw closer to earth. This causes natural disasters to strike the whole world with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and anything bad you can think of. The main protagonist, Miranda, writes in her diary telling us about how this is effecting her life and the people around such as her family, friends, school crush, and neighbors. A quarter the way through the story I found it so funny how similar the things going on in the book are to how things are right now with Covid-19. Many schools are cancelled throughout the world, grocery stores are being raided, and everyone is bored out of their minds! With everything going on with Miranda she feels like she didn't appreciate her normal life until it was gone. Same here. Later on in the book things start getting really bad for her. One of her friends passes away and their family is officially needing to preserve food. They are allowed one meal a day. Miranda's anger and sadness overtake her and she eats the families last bag of chips. Her Mom scolds her for this because she was saving those for her brothers birthday. Filled with guilt and regret, Miranda breaks down and cries. The next day after hearing about Miranda's friend's passing, her neighbor comes and comforts her for the whole day, taking her mind off the issue. I think we all need to be the nice neighbor in our current situation. Be kind to the people around you and work together. If you know an older couple lives next to you, offer them help with food, water, or supplies. We can only get through this together.  

-Andrew Ferrer

ERWC

Period 5