I was fortunate to have a Zoom call yesterday.
Yes, even after living for seven months in Zoomtopia, I was grateful for yesterday’s online gathering.
Since the pandemic lockdown began, my old high school buddies and I have gathered roughly once-a-month, four-at-a-time, to play Settlers of Catan online.
It’s been a fun bit of normalcy in an abnormal world. We’d just sit around, play a few games and shoot the shit. It’s been fun.
My friend James, who lives in the Netherlands and has to stay up late to accommodate his stateside friends, emailed our entire group:
Instead of [Catan] (or along with), maybe we could do a [group] happy hour this weekend? Maybe get the non-gamers to join.
And, voilà, we went from four of us to nine. One friend pointed out that Gallery View looked like the Brady Bunch opening. Fitting for a bunch of guys who came of age when Mike, Carol and their kids were in heavy rotation.
As the call drew to a close, I asked everyone for their COVID silver lining (part of my effort to keep conversations interesting).
James said his silver lining was what we were doing. Before, we’d try and meet in person, once-a-year at best. Now we were chatting monthly.
I’d heard Peter Boghossian say something simple, profound and true a day before on Coleman Hughes’ “Conversations with Coleman” podcast. It summed up our call’s biggest benefit, “You can’t make old friends.”