Who's Zooming Who

 I’ve already spilled the beans on myself that I am an inconsistent, mediocre secret keeper. I can keep other people’s secrets in lock box---UNLESS those secrets involve me--- then I’m all Little Miss Sink Ships with her loose lips.

I have a couple of very delicious secrets that I’m keeping firmly under my hat. And since I can’t talk about them yet—not directly, anyway---I thought I talked about things that are contiguous to them. 

Take, for example, Zoom meetings.

A couple of my secrets involve the necessity of attending Zoom meetings. In case there is anybody out there who has managed to stay blissfully unaware of what a Zoom meeting is—it’s like a cross between and in-person meeting and a conference call—audio AND video.

Years ago—before technology tracked us down in and rudely followed us into the shelter of our homes, a person could be at home and be reached only by an in-person visit or by telephone. You remember telephones—those clunky things that hung on our walls or set on desktops? They would ring and you would answer them and talk to people and NO ONE COULD SEE YOU? Good times, good times...

On a business phone call made from home, you could stay comfortably in your pajamas with no one the wiser. Oh, sure—there were those people who adhered to the Lipstick and Shoe Rule while on the phone---shoes on, lipstick on--so that one would sound professional, i.e. shoe-wearing-- but I fall squarely in the Bare Lip/Bare Foot camp. I’m pretty sure I can fake professionalism. My voice sounds like I’m wearing shoes.

Zoom video calls have ruined that. Now I have to take off my robe, put on Real Clothes, comb my hair and fake professionalism.

How's my hair?

Faking professionalism is a lot harder to do when I’m constantly confronted by my own, live, image. Instead of keeping track of what we are supposed to be talking about all I can think is “is that my hair? Does it really look like that? Dear God!” Zoom calls make me a nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. It takes all my will power to not to keep fidgeting with my hair.

Fortunately for me, I don’t have to fake crappy internet--and as such-- have a beautiful built in excuse to opt out of sharing video while zooming.