I, for one, think it’s brave how colleges and universities around the country decided to drop-kick hundreds of thousands of virus-hoarding students back to their vulnerable parents immediately before a major family holiday and smack at the start of the fall surge experts have been warning us about since April.

I think it so, so brave that schools asked students to get to campus early and go three months straight without a break so people could make it back home in time to be on Day 2 of a two-week quarantine while their families eat Thanksgiving dinner without them.

I think it was especially brave of our own Kenyon College to announce at the last minute that they were changing this week’s in-person classes to be remote, giving on-campus students the opportunity to change their travel plans and get home in time to be on Day 6 of a two-week quarantine while their families eat Thanksgiving dinner without them.

Now, just as the pandemic is at its worst and getting worser, colleges don’t have to deal with their students’ germy bodies again until late January. For that, I bet Admin is thankful.

If you just got home from Kenyon and are actually going to quarantine from your family –– which you SHOULD, if not for a full two weeks then at LEAST until you’ve gotten ANOTHER negative test result, the one you got at Kenyon is NOT enough, ESPECIALLY if you went through an airport–– then you’re probably not feeling great about tomorrow’s festivities.

I’m sorry. It’s rough. But at least you got to sit through your 9:40 in-person last week!

Even if your family has offered to slide a plate of mashed potatoes under your door, I have a few suggestions for yummy isolation meals you make from your own childhood bedroom. All you need is an Easy-Bake Oven. They do in fact still make them.

Single potato mashed against the wall out of frustration: Once mashed, sprinkle on some salt and pop it in your Easy-Bake Oven. (If you break your wall plaster you can start again with another potato.)

Cranberry sauce from a can but you don’t have a can opener so you have to use nail clippers: This will work eventually. If you want to heat it up merely pop it in your Easy-Bake Oven.

Wine: Popping wine in your Easy-Bake Oven would cause the alcohol to cook off so I’d advise against it.

Roll and hard butter: Use the kind of roll they have (or used to have) at Peircegiving, which look really good but are in fact stale. The butter should be an unspreadable lump you bite into at once. Even if you toasted in your Easy-Bake Oven.

Green bean casserole: Cream of mushroom soup + green beans = the side dish we deserve this year. Mix them in a mini casserole dish and pop it in your Easy-Bake Oven.

Individual pumpkin pie with no whipped cream or anything: There is something extremely sad about individual pies they are not accompanied by other individual pies so this is only right. Line a mini pie tin with crushed graham crackers, pour in canned pumpkin pie filling (you will have to use the nail clippers again), and if you’re feeling like a real pastry chef, draw a frowny face on top with your finger. Then pop it in your Easy-Bake Oven.

AND FOR THE MAIN EVENT…

Turkey, dressed for a funeral: Please don’t try to cook an actual raw turkey in your Easy-Bake Oven, it will give you food poisoning. Do take fully-cooked sliced turkey breast (as in lunch meat) and dress it in black olives so it looks like it’s mourning any of the 260,000+ Americans who have died from covid, or any of the 200,000 people who will likely die in the next few months because we continue to make choices that put profits over lives. Then pop the turkey in your Easy-Bake Oven.