Julia always slept well until tonight. Something felt “different” about her room. Her night light was on, as usual, but the room seemed more lighted than it normally was. She turned over on her left side and saw a most unusual sight. It was a huge “ball” floating about a foot off the floor. It was about 3 feet in diameter and had a rough, gray surface with red, triangular-shaped “pins” over the entire surface. She recognized it as the graphic depiction of the “Covid” virus she had seen on TV. She wasn’t scared, because she knew she had to be dreaming. She had heard her Aunti Jamie say that the key to killing the disease was removing the red “pins”. Was she right? Aunt Jamie was the smartest person she knew. Should she even touch the object? She wanted to kill it, but if she touched it, would it kill her?
She had a plan. She went quietly to the kitchen and got some latex gloves. Back in her room, she put on the gloves and carefully reached and grasped on of the pins. It was soft, and it came out easily. She looked at it. What now?
She went to the bathroom and flushed the pin down the toilet. “That’s one down.” She went back to her room and removed another pin and flushed it. As she made one trip after another, she thought, “This has got to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever done.”
She noticed that as she removed pins, the ball began to deflate. After the last pin was removed, the ball was a flat, gray mass. She threw the gloves under her bed and went to sleep.

Julia was up with the sun. She had a busy day ahead of her; dolls to play with, cartoons to watch, friends to visit. She wanted an early start to get everything done. She went to the living room and dad had the news on! YUK! “Dad! Me and Jack want to watch cartoons. What’s so important about the news?”
“Hush!”
Adults have no respect for kids when they interrupt TV watching. Julia settled onto the couch to wait for Dad to go to sleep so she could change the channel.
UPDATE!!! Big news today! “Wow,” thought Julia gloomily. “We’ll probably have to watch the news for about 10 minutes. My play day is wasting away fast.”
“The CDC announced today that there have been no new cases of Covid19. There have also been no deaths in the last 12 hours. Those infected with the disease are rapidly improving. This unexplained phenomenon is occurring worldwide. Scientists are working to determine what caused the sudden reversal and warn that the disease could return at any time. They say people should continue to wear masks until it becomes clear that this pandemic is over.”
Julia was stunned. She thought of her dream. It was a dream, wasn’t it? She rushed to her room. There on the floor was a flat, gray mass. She retrieved her gloves from under the bed and picked up the mass. She carried it to the kitchen, put it into a trash bag, and carried it to the trash can outside.
Should she tell anyone? Nah, no one would believe her. Wait. Aunt Jamie would believe her. She would call her later. For now, Dad had gone to sleep, so she switched the TV to the Cartoon Channel.