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By Jake JonesDuring this period of quarantine I continuously come back to a very familiar feeling: as though I am a child on a long holiday or a snowy week in which school has been canceled, the outside world has been closed and life has ground to a halt. To be honest I have grown quite fond of the feeling, one of those feelings from my childhood that I greatly enjoyed and feared I would never experience again.
After weeks holed up in my apartment, I began to reflect on what I enjoyed doing most when I was younger. How did I fill a whole day of doing nothing? As I reflected, what I found surprised me—and has proven to be a stabilizing force for my weeks in quarantine. Some of my fondest memories of childhood came on Sunday mornings, which all looked the same: we all got up, cooked a family breakfast (usually pancakes and bacon), and sat in the living room watching the CBS Sunday Morning News.
If I had to identify the voices of my childhood, three come to mind: that of CBS’s chief play-by-play analyst Verne Lundquist; Garrison Keillor who narrated NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion (which seemed a staple for every long car ride I ever took with my father), and at the top of my list of memories is Charles Osgood, the host of CBS Sunday Morning.
Whenever I watch an old clip of Osgood, I can picture my living room back home filled with my family, sleepy-eyed, sporting bedhead, eating pancakes, and wearing smiles. Reflecting on how much I used to love this weekly tradition, I was ashamed to admit that since coming to college I had practically abandoned this ritual. College brought less structure, longer Saturday nights, and practically nonexistent Sunday mornings. With the newfound abundance of free time the coronavirus bestowed on me, I made a decision to recreate my family's Sunday tradition in my apartment with all of my roommates.
I have lived with the same three guys—in the same building, same unit, and same rooms—for the past three years, a rarity in the lives of most college students. We have really become a sort of surrogate family for each other over these three years. We have witnessed the coming and going of good times and bad, jobs, interests, hobbies, girlfriends, and majors—and we’ve stuck together through it all. I knew that creating a new tradition would be directly tied to convincing these guys to buy into my whim.
To be honest, when I first introduced the idea to them, I was met with polite indifference. They seemed willing to create a Sunday morning routine in which we ate pancakes and watched tv—until I told them it was a news broadcast that began at nine in the morning. After a certain amount of pleading and a promise that I would prepare all of the food, my roommates agreed to humor me for one Sunday morning.
Our first “CBS Sunday Morning Pancake Breakfast,” as they would come to be known, did not go as planned. I awoke early to prepare the breakfast and, to my amazement, all of my roommates woke up early (most likely due to the smell of bacon and the fire alarm I accidentally set off) and were in the living room sleepily nursing cups of coffee. By 9 a.m., we were devouring stacks of pancakes and waiting for the show to begin. Sadly, this is where the momentum ended; by the end of the show two of my roommates were asleep on the couch, and all the other had to say was “This isn’t really like news news, it’s more like happy news right?” While I was proud of the review from the one conscious roommate, I still didn’t feel the same sense of unity like when I was a child.
Sunday No. 2 showed improvement though, as all of us cooked, and spurred on by the support of two girlfriends who joined us, no smoke alarms were triggered, and no bacon was scorched. We all gathered around the tv, but this time everyone was awake chatting about the stories, laughing at Jim Gaffigan’s monologue, comparing Mo Rocca to a mutual friend of ours, and marveling at the nature scenes used to close the show each week. My roommates, all engineering majors, and the girls, both biology majors, commented on how they avoided many news shows due to the focus on politics but appreciated Sunday Morning because of its upbeat demeanor and nonpolitical nature.
We have not missed an episode of CBS Sunday Morning since our new tradition began. We’ve talk about our favorite correspondents, we’ve watched Charles Osgood’s episodes on YouTube, and we’ve worked our way through the musicians and artists featured in the show’s recent history. We all called our moms after the Mother’s Day episode with a little extra appreciation than usual. This experience has taught me many things about myself and my current state, particularly the value of traditions as a unifying force, that bad situations such as global pandemics and national quarantine orders can give way to valuable quality time and positive experiences, and that the most valuable time is when you spend it with those you care about.
This new tradition showed me that the reason I valued those childhood memories of CBS Sunday Morning was not because of the show (granted I still love it) but because I was spending time with people that I truly loved. Though I may not be with my true family during this period, I can now share this tradition with my Louisville family. I also now realize that Jane Pauley, Mo Rocca, and Jim Gaffigan are not the reason I wake up excited at 8 am Sunday morning; rather it is the opportunity to spend time with friends, sharing happy moments rubbing sleep from our eyes, spending time together, and eating pancakes.
Jake Jones, of Cynthiana, Ky., is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2021. He studies political science and history at the University of Louisville.