When Darwin Daze ‘21 woke from his four year coma, the first thing he reportedly mentioned was that he was pumped to get out and throw himself a waking up party.

“And yet, I woke up to a worldwide pandemic. I’m honestly still trying to process,” Daze said.

Daze was hit in the head by a clown back in 2016 when taking part in the mannequin challenge. Not wanting to ruin the video, he let the clown tackle him to the ground, which led to his coma. When going into his unforeseen rest, Daze’s biggest concern was the clowns; moreover, he had plans for a lunch outing with Kobe Bryant.

“Waking up from my four year coma, I noticed how much the world has changed.” Daze said. “It went from crazy clowns roaming the streets to now this. I could spend hours talking about this disaster called 2020 that I have woken up in.”

The weekend before Daze fell into a coma, he won a contest to go out to eat with Kobe at Buffalo Wild Wings. Once he was told those plans would no longer take place, since he fell into a coma, Daze did not take it very well.

“This is just wack, I don’t understand the situation,” Daze said. “All I wanted was some free food and good company, and now all I’ve got is a tribune, no wings, and my eyes won’t stop watering.” 

Claiming to be full of frustration and grief, Daze wanted to release some tension by showing off his dab. In 2016 Daze got the best dab award at school, and he believes it will always be his biggest achievement. Yet when Daze took a trip to Target to show off his skills, he reported being verbally assaulted and kicked out instead of being applauded for his moves. Daze reports that he is still shaken up by the encounter.

“I just wanted to show off my dab in my local grocery store but instead I was shoved away and called Karen,” Daze said. “I have no clue who Karen is and why everyone was so persistent about me wearing a mask when clearly I’m not a surgeon.”

With the mindset of a 2016 teenager, Daze is behind on all the 2020 trends. Not just the new norms of today’s age, but social media trends as well.

Before Daze’s coma, Daze was a huge fan of Musical.ly. In hopes of getting featured, he usually made three videos daily.

“Musical.ly wasn’t just something he [Daze] did once in a while,” his mother Meghan Daze said. “He lived with passion, and he lived Musical.ly. Since the trend has turned into TikTok, I’m not quite sure how he will react.”

TikTok has been a huge hit amongst an increasing number of teens. Statistics show that in a typical senior online class, 73 percent of them are secretly on TikTok as opposed to actually engaged in schoolwork.

With a shift to online school, nowadays students can endure a lesson anywhere on the planet. Unfortunately for Daze, his calculus teacher Jenna Sanchez had been marking him absent all year. Sanchez is a strong believer that online school can be done anywhere and everywhere which has led her to continuously mark Daze’s absences unexcused.

“A student can log into my Zoom class wherever they’d like,” Sanchez said. “Being in a coma cannot be an excuse because you should still be able to access a laptop, iPad or any other device to be able to take part in my class. He is going to have a whole semester to catch up on if he wants to pass.”

Sanchez, as reported by Daze, has been very harsh towards him yet the other teachers have been more lenient. Being in a coma and attending class is a mixture that Daze did not accomplish, but claims to start studying soon to get back on track.

Now that Daze is out of his coma, he is focused on transitioning to this new reality. He explained that he believes that one just has to hold on tight, since this year is a rollercoaster ride.

“It will take a while to figure things out, especially how to do the TikTok renegade move,” Daze said. “Even though I slept through a lot, I wouldn’t mind going back to bed until this nightmare ends.”