Now that more and more of my life is lived in Zoom computer meetings, I’m starting to notice a few details.
For example, I am seeing that the other people in these meetings all seem to live with Martha Stewart, whereas I am clearly calling from the bottom of a well. A dark, messy, cluttered well.
And this is not just about my family and friends. With so many newspeople reporting from their own homes, it seems that if they’re not standing in a whistle-clean kitchen, then they’re sitting in a cozy, book-lined den. I can even tell you the color of their bookshelves, because with rare exceptions, everyone paints their bookshelves white.
My favorite is the bookshelf behind Rafael Pi Roman, a host and senior editor on WNET/Channel 13. He has so many books jammed onto every shelf, with even more wedged in at the top horizontally, that I can’t believe it hasn’t come down already. I tune in just to see if he will survive that bookcase for another day.
I have a bookcase, too, a lot neater than his — but no one seems to see it. All anybody sees are the few little odds and ends that are piled in front of it.
“Judy!” said my brother. “Is that your treadmill piled high with boxes and clothing? How long has it been since you used it?”
“Um, just a few weeks,” I said, and quickly change the subject.
“Yo, Judy,” sais a friend, some days later. “I thought you were getting rid of that old armchair? And what’s that sitting on top of it? A printer?”
“No, it’s a typewriter.”
“A typewriter? What do you need one of those for? I thought they’d all been melted down!”
“I need it to type up mailing labels, if you must know.”
“Why do that? You have a computer printer, don’t you?”
The truth is I’ve never yet figured out how to get a mailing label safely un-mangled through my printer, but she doesn’t need to know that. Instead, I said, “I’m saving it for when I type up a fake suicide note to leave next to your body.”
I was in a discussion group about the Golden Rule when my mind began to wander.
“What would it mean to do unto others as you would have others do unto you?” the leader was asking.
“Um, don’t judge me by the clutter in my Zoom background?” I volunteered.
The discussion moved on, but I stayed transfixed — by the seven years’ worth of tax records stacked on the couch.
And the seven years’ worth of toilet paper stacked on the floor beside it.
By the computer keyboard that quit working suspiciously soon after I sprayed it with Lysol, and which had to be replaced at full cost but which might dry out and start working again, someday.
And the recyclable shopping bag full of other bags that are all waiting for the day when we can leave the house because “Someday, Scarlett, I promise you, I will Shop Again!”
And what’s that big cardboard box with the big distracting label on the side? I decide to turn it so at least the label isn’t showing.
Oops! The whole thing fell over onto a stack of books, which fell onto the stack of toilet paper, which fell and rolled around and ….
It’s time I gave up. Maybe I should just drape a sheet over the whole mess and tell everyone I’m at the summer home, with the butler taking some time off. (Unless people are going to worry that the butler’s body is under the sheet?)
“Mom, why don’t you just use one of the zillion backgrounds Zoom has for precisely this situation?”
“You can do that? Quick! Find me some New-York-anchorperson bookshelves!”
Let people wonder how I got into the room with Rafael Pi Roman.
