A ‘scary’ virus

Gracin Runde Northeast Nodaway third grader

RAVENWOOD, Mo. — Like everyone else over the past 9-10 months, Gracin Runde, a third grader at Northeast Nodaway R-V, is trying to make sense out of what the COVID-19 pandemic means for him.

But at all of 9 years old, he might be better at shrugging off some parts of it than others many years his senior. He’s worn his mask at school as requested, but otherwise hasn’t had a whole lot of questions about it — other than when it’s all going to be over.

Runde said he had to think back a long way to remember hearing about the virus for the first time.

“Yeah, like, last (school) year, whenever I was 8,” he said. “(I heard) that China had it, and then they spreaded it to Kansas City. And that made me scared because two of my aunts live there.”

Neither aunt has come down with the virus, he said. And on a more exciting note, Runde added, one of them had a baby.

But what made him scared of the virus?

“Because it’s a bad sickness and like, it spreads really easy.”

For that reason, he said he doesn’t mind having to wear his mask.

“(It’s) kind of good so we don’t spread it,” Runde said.

Runde said that he was also concerned for other at-risk family members, especially around the holidays. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, he said his family usually gets together.

“We call it ‘Thristmas,’ we get with family, but the people that we go to, the house we go to, she had an open heart surgery, so we don’t know if she’s going to open her house for people,” he said.

Earlier this year, he found himself quarantined with the rest of his family, he said, when one of his cousins contracted the virus. Although he said everybody got along with each other just fine while cooped up in quarantine, continuing with school presented some difficulties.

“(It was) not easy,” Runde said. “You had to get on Zooms, like, four to three times a day.”

But he insisted the difficulties weren’t always on his end. After all, if he was forced to say (editor’s note: and he was) who had a better handle on how to use Zoom, “I knew better,” he said with a laugh. Still, if he has to attend school instead of just stay home, he said he’d rather be there in person.

Editor’s Note

This feature was published in The Maryville Forum as a two-part series on Thursday, Dec. 3 and Thursday, Dec. 10. Articles may have been edited for space within the print edition, but will be available at full length at The Forum’s online focus on COVID-19 in the Community.

To give readers an idea of student knowledge and concerns regarding the pandemic, one student’s story will be posted each weekday at 6 p.m. through the end of 2020.