By Simon Cox

I stared at the screen, and sixteen unmoving Zoom meeting participants stared right back at me. Well, technically they were looking at the instructor. I flipped through the Zoom meeting’s many “pages” – into which we were automatically divided based on how much we spoke – to see the interest level of their inhabitants following a clear downwards trend, ending, of course, at those with their cameras simply turned off. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, but since I had no idea if this interest-based hierarchy was broadcasting my face to hundreds of pairs of eyeballs at that very moment, I continued to sit up straight and feign interest in the global water consumption crisis. Yes, yes. I agree. A couple hours of that.

I knew three things about this Zoom call prior to joining: It would be about world issues, it would have special guests, and since those special guests were especially special, the invitation was a high honour. I said yes before receiving the details, which I regretted immediately after reading the corresponding email: 9am-1pm, Saturday and Sunday, it read. I suppose I did say yes, but damn, this better be good, I thought.

I leaned back in my chair as a loading icon was displayed. We would be split into groups to get to know each other before beginning a big group project, we were told. Then, the screen lit up with a view of three other kids. One was on their bed. One had their camera off. One leaned her head on her hand in front of her wall, with a poster reading “It do be like that sometimes” pinned to it. We got to introducing ourselves, but quickly moved on to the topic of this workshop event as a whole. 

“Oh, I am so not ready for this,” moaned the girl with the poster, “I’m just so tired, y’know?”

“Well,” said the boy on the bed, “it do be like that sometimes.”

Silence.

“‘Cause, like, the poster…”

“Oh yeah, yeah I know.”

We were off to a great start.

Hours and hours passed, and so many dirty dishes magically appeared on my desk that I could make another desk out of them. At one point, while I was zoning out during another speech from some charity, a Zoom notification popped up on my screen:

Unnamed User privately messages Simon Cox:

Hey, you seem like a pretty cool dude.

Well. Okay, then. I was completely stumped. Was this meant for another person? In retrospect, this message was the most entertaining thing I had experienced all day. I stared at the message for a while. No follow-up, no context, no revisions. That was the message. Huh. I clicked on the “find” button next to the message, and I was sent back to page 8, which consisted entirely of “camera off” icons, where I was pointed towards just one of the many. As expected, I’d never heard this guy speak, seen his face, or interacted with him in any way. Completely at a loss on how to respond, I fell back to my ol’ reliable:

Simon Cox privately messages Unnamed User:

Thanks, you too.

To this day, I have no idea what that guy meant. Most likely, he was kicking himself for messaging the wrong person. Because it’s weird to send a stranger a message like that, and the only way he could have taken it back would be to follow up with “Oops, wrong person. You stupid loser.”

By the time we were supposed to make our presentations, I had gained some kind of psychic ability to tell what people were thinking when they spoke. “We’re very excited to speak to you today,” announced a student. I have never been so bored, they thought. “I’d be happy to join,” students said. Please end me, they thought. There was also some kind of representative from the United Nations (Seriously! The United Nations!) on the call. “Thank you for your valuable time,” he said. I could literally be saving millions of lives at this very moment, he thought. It was at that moment that I stopped feeling sorry for myself for getting stuck in this Zoom call; That poor UN guy probably had to take time out of his high-level diplomatic work to watch a bunch of unprepared teenagers tell him that climate change was bad for five minutes, run a game of Kahoot, and end off with a “Thanks for listening” GIF. But he just smiled and smiled. What a guy.

After the eight hours had finally passed, and my weekend was mostly through with, I logged off with nothing to show for it but a certificate in the underwhelming form of a PDF file. I had a boring weekend, but it was entirely on me for saying yes. But I did learn one thing: It do be like that sometimes.