Zoom

This morning I heard Skylar in the other room on a Zoom call with a bunch of people from school. I had slipped into the room a few times while this was happening and I noticed every time I did that he was slightly less dressed than the time before, like he was playing some game of virtual strip poker.

I thought about being interested in this but then reminded myself that if I took note of every odd thing he does I'd have to open a library and I hate indexing and barely remember how the Dewey Decimal System works. So I stopped paying attention, even as he fully stripped down to some short shorts and nothing else.

He wasn't participating in the call and seemed to be doing jumping jacks and stretching a lot so I assumed he was on mute with his video off. That was until I heard someone on the Zoom call finally say "uh . . . Skylar? Do you know your camera is on?"

A few things: one, it's interesting that they waited so many minutes to inform him of this. Two, how does this very tech-savvy millennial not know how to operate his laptop camera? Three, the question implied that the people on the call thought it was a real possibility that Skylar was intentionally stripping and exercising in front of them. It reminded me of that time I was at the gym with a giant rip in my bike shorts and that guy told me "you probably don't care but there's a huge hole in your butt" and I was immediately like "WHY DO I SEEM LIKE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO WOULDN'T CARE?"


Anyway, Skylar immediately screamed and then frantically started clicking buttons while a chorus of distant voices laughed through his laptop speakers.

When the call ended he ran into the room I was in and started downloading the entire story for me.

"And my camera was on! But I had taken my clothes off! I was EATING ORANGES IN FRONT OF THEM!" he yelled, not seeming to have a great grasp on the most embarrassing parts of this.

I asked him why he was naked in the first place and he said "I was getting really sweaty and I forgot the computer could see me."

I married my match, truly.

Anyone have any experiences where you incorrectly thought you were on mute or otherwise couldn't be seen or heard?

Also, please enjoy some Strangerville:

This time in Strangerville, Meg and Eli think nobody wants to talk to them. And a man tells a story about growing up in a cult.

Story

“The Crick” by Jeff Barlow

Production by Eli McCann, Meg Walter, and Jolyn Metro

~It Just Gets Stranger