The two things I miss most about a normal summer are swimming and coffee shops. It’s kind of ironic because I can barely swim.

Now that we’re having a global pandemic, some public pools where I live in Virginia are open on a limited basis. Then someone working there tests positive for Covid-19 and they shut down for a while.

I am taking private swimming lessons with my daughter. In five lessons, I’ve made a lot of progress because I can now swim with my face in the water, but I still prefer to doggie paddle than use the strokes. My daughter, who is 11, is ready for swim team, the instructor told me. Of course, when she said that, I beamed with pride. But I’m not going to put her on a competitive swim team because I think competition takes the fun out of things, even if you are the person who always wins, because you have to keep winning until you beat everyone else and have no friends.

My daughter is also attending chess camp this week. You should see these serious little people walking into chess camp with their masks on, getting their temperatures checked at the door. They are ready to compete. Yesterday she texted me on her break, saying a boy had surrendered to her to keep her from getting a point. She was annoyed.

What can I say? She beats me at chess almost every time. I have to ask her what the rules are. I’m telling you, if you haven’t had your butt kicked either intellectually or athletically by an 11-year-old, you haven’t lived.

I used to take my own kids to public pools in the next county over so I could avoid seeing too many students from the school where I teach, because once you see your teacher in a bathing suit, you can’t unsee it. Sometimes even when I drove 30 minutes away, I would still see my students.

That was last summer, when we didn’t have to wear masks and public places weren’t Coronavirus hotpots. I thought I hated being seen in a bathing suit, but now I miss being able to swim, even though I can’t swim.

You just don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

And the coffee shops. I miss when I could take my laptop and my notebook and sit in a coffee shop with no mask. I saw a picture someone posted of some Republican senator on an airplane. His mask was under his chin and the post stated that he “refused” to wear his mask. But he had coffee in his hand. You can’t drink coffee with a mask on. Sorry, but even this liberal snowflake wasn’t falling for that propaganda.

At least I am not a senator. Thank god for that.

I thought I hated being seen in my swimming trunks doggie paddling at public pools. My students and my own kids thought they hated school. Now they know what it’s like to take classes online and they think maybe going to class was actually not so bad because at least they got to see friends and ask questions in person.

If we do return to classes in person in September, school will be a sobering experience like never before with social distancing and Coronavirus fears hanging over our heads. A lot of my students didn’t like writing. Asking them to write a persuasive essay was almost like asking me to engineer a bridge. But as long as we had a good book, they liked reading. And talking about what we were reading. They liked when I read aloud.

I have this feeling that the stories I read to people are all they will remember about me or my class. I know it won’t be my stand-up comedy act. I’ve been told I’m not funny, that my sense of humor is broken, and that I am so serious it is scary.

How am I going to read aloud with a mask on?

This summer I miss pools, coffee shops, and walking into stores without a mask on. In the fall, if we go back to class like our school district is planning, I won’t spend as much time nagging kids to put their cell phones away because I’ll probably have to nag them to put their masks back on. Group work and class discussions will turn into online discussion posts.

It’s not the same.

In this world of social distancing, where you can’t always understand the person right next to you because they are speaking through a mask, it feels like our laptops and cellphones are all we have. Last year I would have said no one needs one. This year, it’s socialize and learn online or not at all. And it makes last year’s problems look good by comparison.