Making the Best of Tough Circumstances

Have you ever had a great idea, planned it all out, and then everything goes completely wrong?
That was my Thanksgiving.

My family and I have a nice camper with two slide outs for the dinner table and the king bed. On the Friday afternoon before Thanksgiving, around 2:00 pm, my dad came home to finish packing and getting everything ready for a week at the beach. We were planning to leave at 5:00 the next morning.

But within 30 minutes of starting what should have been an uneventful packing job, it felt like everything went wrong. My dad came in and asked my mom, who was about to get on a meeting for her job, if she wanted the bad news: One of the slides on the camper was stuck open and wouldn’t move. (And in case you don’t know, you can’t drive a camper that way!)

I’m telling you this because you’ve probably had many things this year which seemed fine, but suddenly turned very wrong. In our case, we were all frustrated and considered giving up and just staying home, but we decided to go and make the best of a difficult situation. I’m so glad we did. Focusing on the bright side of our situation–that the camper got stuck here and not nine hours away–we made alternate plans to go camping at the beach, just in a different way.

Once we got to where we were camping and we set everything up, including some old or quickly-borrowed tents, a canopy, coolers, and food. We had looked weeks in advance to see what the weather might be like and the forecast was for absolutely no rain and 70 degrees.

Instead, on our first night camping it rained all night, and the bottom of my parents’ tent was completely soaked and everything was wet. So my parents had to take everything out of their tent to dry, placing the food in the front seat of my dad’s truck and strapping the coolers together so the raccoons couldn’t get in them.

While we could have given in to complaining about what “might have been,” we decided to not let these hiccups ruin our vacation. As a family, we had a great time enjoying family, the beach, a Thanksgiving meal, and adventures that included finding about 120 shark teeth and lots of full conch shells.

As a student at FCHS, I’ve had to face many similar challenges this year, including navigating virtual learning. Currently, I am sharing a router that gives off cell service with my sister and brother, who also attend school in Fluvanna, as well as my mom, who is working from home thanks to the pandemic. So when everyone is on a meeting at the same time, things can be a bit tricky.

But on the bright side, I am getting an education, and my brother, sister, and I all have really great teachers who understand that this is not what we want, but this is what we have. I get to see my family everyday and wear my pajamas to school. As with our “hiccup” with our camper, I’m learning to look on the bright side.

Covid is something that everyone right now can relate to in one way or another. We have all been in quarantine or facing some sort of restrictions since March. And while it doesn’t seem to be getting much better at the moment, there are a number of reasons why Covid has made a positive difference in our lives.

Covid has shown me how to appreciate the small things in life. I get to see my family everyday and I have really gotten to know who they are in a way I wouldn’t have done without Covid. I get to sleep in, wear my pajamas everyday, and have learned to bake a lot of cookies at a time.

So there is always a way to look at the good side of a situation. In every horrible circumstance, something may good come out of it. In the moment, you may think that everything is wrong and hopeless. But when you take the time to look back and see that it was just a small, temporary thing and then look for the good in the situation, it can really open your eyes.