Waiting For Superman: CV Stories, 29 April 2020
Living in Zoom World, and keeping your brain as active as possible.
This newsletter is publishing your quarantine and coronavirus stories every Wednesday. These are stories from you about how this is affecting you, your family, your friends … your daily life. No story is too small or too big. (The regular weekly newsletter will continue uninterrupted.) Email me your story at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.
The first story this week comes to us from Ken G. from Denver:
Maybe you run in more erudite circles, but have you noticed that each week of the pandemic shutdown (is there a better name for it?), the ability to come up with interesting chatter with friends and family is drying up?
Your typical Zoom group call starts out promising, but after awhile, what is there left to say? You can’t really debate the pandemic policy too much because, in the end, none of us are pandemic specialists (and those that are seem to be using the same antiquated statistical analysis that the Yankees used in the 1980s; been lots of Ken Phelps-for-Jay Buhner days in the last six months). You just shrug and hope for the best. Groups that would talk for hours into the night now get to the 35-minute mark and ... there’s not much left to say. We don’t have to go anywhere, so the normal babysitter/let-the-dog-out excuses don’t fly in Zoom World. We are in a Camus book we can’t get out of.
That’s what made the NFL Draft so much fun -- finally a weekend of interesting topics to chew over. I now think I know what sports means to me: It is the gap filler in life, the elixir of family and friendships and everything.
The next story, also Zoom-related, comes from Scott from Vancouver:
My people, men and women, nominally all adults, are games people. Board games, card games, poker for quarters. Basically any game, any time.
Some folks can call up a friend and talk for an hour. But others are wired just a bit differently. We can enjoy each others’ company just as often, but it helps if there’s a wee bit of social lubricant to grease the wheels, and games provide a nice structure to our get-togethers. I’m an organizer at heart.
I decided we needed a virtual pub quiz night. It was surprisingly easy to set up the logistics of it, and the evening looked very close to the in-real-life version we used to attend monthly. I had 19 participants, drawn from friends near and far, as well as from my book club which has developed a weekly virtual happy hour. Using Zoom breakout rooms I was able to divide people into teams of 6-7 each, while using WhatsApp I was able to keep verbal communication lines open between me (in the main Zoom room) and the people in the breakout rooms. 30 questions over three rounds, teams get 90 seconds to debate the correct answer to doozies like, “What is the total number of Star Trek movies added to the total number of iPhone generations?” (26, 13 of each) and, “Which planets in our solar system have rings around them?” (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune). As you can imagine, this evening was a tremendous hit.
My latest creation is to expand on the idea of the fantasy draft. Most of my people aren’t sports people, but when you think about it, you can hold a draft for anything. The first week we drafted “Travel Destinations.” We had to pick one place per continent, plus two wild-card slots. At the end, we debated and then voted on which list was most interesting. (A person can’t vote for their own list.) My friends had never done any kind of fantasy draft before, but they were open to trying this; boredom really expands a person’s sense of what sounds like a good idea. Turns out, we all loved it, and we were surprisingly thoughtful about trying to pick the best ‘team’. Next week is the Dinner Party Draft: you’re hosting a dinner party for 8, so you can invite 7 people, real or imaginary, live or dead. Who’s going to come up with the most interesting party? My draft board includes Tyrion Lannister, Jesus Christ (what does it say about me that he’s a 2nd round pick after Tyrion?), Michelle Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, and Frida Kahlo. The last couple of spots I’m debating between Nelson Mandela, Cleopatra, Stephen Colbert, and Gandalf.
The final story comes from Aaron:
Last weekend was my daughter's birthday. We are staying with our in-laws for now, but wanted everyone to feel like they could participate, so we started up multiple Hangouts/WhatsApp calls.
In the picture attached, there are people calling in from San Francisco, Sacramento, Toronto, and Lima, Peru. This picture will always be a reminder of how we found joy and connection in the middle of all this.
Great stories this week, all about The Zooming of our world. The Zooming around here has gotten so crazy even the Leitches have gotten involved.
Of the three households, the one that had the most trouble figuring it out was me.
Send me your pandemic stories at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.