On Remembering My Friends, My First Job, and My Second-Favorite Weezer CD

When his son uncovers a Weezer CD at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cody Taitano recalls his first job at McDonalds during his senior year of high school. Back in 1999, he is a quiet kid desperate to make friends. His classmates, though, see nothing about him worth knowing, and his own family often leave him to figure out his problems for himself. Codys life is disrupted when, while he bikes home from work, the police mistake him for the only other brown kid at his school. This brief encounter with the cops highlights the complex intertwined relationship between race and class Cody struggled with growing up and prompts him to ruminate on all the ways that people can make themselves responsible for each otherboth as high school friends and as parents during a global pandemic.