Love's Real Stories

“If there is a silver lining in all of this Coronavirus shut-down, its Zoom,” said Evelyn. She was speaking to me from inside a two-inch square box on my computer screen, a participant in our Zoom meeting. The computer screen was filled with 20 square boxes of the same size. Each box contains one person, or more like the torso of one person. Each person is miniature, alive and in color. The person’s name is printed on the bottom edge of the box so you know who they are. They talk to you, and you talk to them, no matter how far away they may physically be. The Zoom scene is a bizarre scene, unless you happen to be a jaded techie, perhaps unimpressed by technological advances such as Zoom. 

For someone like me, a Zoom meeting harkens back to Dick Tracy comics. Dick Tracy and his cohorts wore wristwatches with a screen in which you could see, hear, and talk to another human being, live and in color. A wild concept at the time, and as unfathomable as the Star Trek transporter, you know the one: “Beam me up, Scotty.” The Dick Tracy wristwatch, as seen in those old-time comic books, is now a reality, as seen in Zoom. It cannot be long before we are willingly disintegrating our bodies in one location and reconfiguring them in another location miles or even light-years away, in an instant, as seen in Star Trek.

“Even though we’re all remote, we can still work with each other,” continued Evelyn. “Zoom came just in time. It’s the ultimate in social-distancing.”

The popularity of Zoom has escalated with the arrival of the Coronavirus Event and has become the go-to method for group meetings. It’s a part of the ‘New Normal’.

“True, true!” said Barb. The outlines of Barb’s square box lit up electronic-yellow as she spoke, darkened when she stopped. The box lit up again, as she said, “But I’m getting Zoomed out. Meetings, meetings, meetings! My family is driving me crazy, too. They all want to Zoom all the time now!”

“I have a question about the Coronavirus Addendum to the Contract,” said Lisa as her square lit up. “Are we to…….”

Another box lit up as Jeff began to speak, interfering with Lisa: “Should we supply our Buyers with rubber gloves when we show…” “Hey, good morning!” said Ken, joining the meeting and interfering with Jeff and Lisa. Another box lit up, squawking and squealing, drowning out all others. It was a box with no name, and no video. We couldn’t see anyone in the box. It was a new participant joining the meeting, possibly with bad equipment, or perhaps they were running their fingernails down a blackboard for fun.

“Mute! Mute! Mute!” screamed participants. “Mute him, Doug, mute him!” said others.
I was the ‘Host’ of the meeting, so I had the power to mute any or all participants. I frantically searched for the right place at the bottom of my screen to click ‘Mute All Participants.’ Chaos ensued in the Zoom meeting. Boxes flashed on and off sporadically across the screen. The noise was like an elephant stampede, or a stadium full of soccer fans blowing their screeching Vuvuzelas, those long plastic horns of which I could not remember the name until I just Googled “soccer horns.”

At last, I succeeded in muting all participants. Beautiful silence.

“Okay,” I said, “when you want to speak you can unmute yourself and…” Alas, I had not unmuted myself. I was a silent talking head. My mouth was moving, but no sound.

“Unmute! Unmute! You need to Unmute!” came the screams from the little boxes, as they unmuted themselves and yelled at me.

And so it goes in Zoom meetings. Won’t it be great to get back to the Old Normal?