All right. Enough, as Joe Biden would say, with the malarky. No more coddling. Entitled kids need not apply. But I hope they read this.
Last Friday night, there apparently was a party among high school kids in Marblehead. It was the type of gathering we saw all over the news last spring and early in the summer, as the COVID-19 numbers spiked everywhere else in the country except here. We clucked our tongues. We called these people, who were crowding beaches, attending rallies and barbecues, stupid and selfish.
Boy. We felt so superior, didn’t we? If you looked at a map during that period, say from about the end of June through July, you saw that wave of states where the virus had spread uncontrollably creeping closer and closer to New England. But this area seemed to be walled off. We — it seemed — were doing something right while everyone else was just blithely ignoring COVID and its dangers.
Then, in August, the state came out with its first color-coded chart, and while Massachusetts’ numbers still weren’t bad — in comparison to the rest of the country — Lynn and Revere were among the four communities that made the red zone, the designation for cities and towns with the highest danger of a COVID spread.
Lynn has never left the red zone. Other communities around us have been in and out. And as of last Thursday evening, four had grown to 77, and Swampscott joined the fray. One town that has remained in at least the moderate-risk group is Marblehead.
That may change. Apparently, the students at the high school thought it would be a neat idea to hold a party, without masks, without proper social distancing, sharing drinks, etc. This is according to superintendent John Buckey, who, with the town, took decisive action as a result and pushed the students back to 100 percent remote learning at the high school for the next two weeks — at least. This is especially tough to take considering that principal Dan Bauer had worked feverishly to get the school ready to receive students again.
Bravo to Buckey. I’m tired of hearing about how being forced to wear a mask, stay six feet apart, limit social gatherings both inside and out, is somehow an infringement of people’s freedoms. And I’m tired of hearing about, and reading about, entitled kids who think that because they’re young they’ll skate by even if they do catch this thing. Apparently, the rest of us can go to blazes, right?
Thinking back to the last time youthful hubris and unmitigated arrogance collided in such a fashion, it happened seven years ago when the Swampscott High hockey team was about to play for a state championship and two of its players decided to drink alcohol two nights before the game. They got caught, were suspended, and the team lost.
This is worse. Any one of these partyers had to have been sleeping under a boulder, let alone a rock, over the last month to pull this kind of a stunt. Massachusetts is back up to levels of daily COVID cases not seen since May, when the virus was just coming down from its ungodly early-spring spike. It’s become so bad that Salem has practically shut down. Swampscott — Swampscott — is in the red zone. And that’s with four mandatory-mask zones around town.
Once again, COVID is central on everyone’s minds. Once again, we’re looking at kids not being able to play sports, and the MIAA is already considering canceling the winter postseason tournaments. There’s a good chance another group of high school kids could miss senior year and all that goes with it.
But go ahead. Have a COVID party — and then scatter like rats when the police come to break it up. That way, you’ll punish everyone, and not just your own cowardly selves.
What a bunch of selfish, spoiled, and entitled jerks. And for all you mothers and fathers out there who find that harsh, all I can say is, “Too bad.”