Quarantine Adventures #47 - How I Almost Got Banned From An Online Art School....
Hey friends! How's quarantine treating ya'? Like a lot of us we are having to get creative with ways to stay social. Anyone had any Zoom happy hours or game nights? My friends and I have been really into this lately. In fact, I think I "see" some of them more now than ever before which has been AMAZING.
One of our favorite games to play in Zoom meetings is a game called Quiplash. It's SO FUN, I highly recommend it. Now, this game can be as tame or as out there as you want it to be. It features open ended questions that you use your cell phone as a game remote of sorts to type in your answers. It then pairs your answers anonymously against a friend and the rest of the group votes on the best answers (in their opinion). Seriously loads of fun! (I'll leave a link at the bottom for anyone that is interested.) So, Zoom has this wonderful feature where you can make your background any image you want. In between rounds some of us would change our backgrounds to be relevant to a funny answer from rounds prior. i.e. There was a Lindsey Lohan question so I made my background Lindsey Lohan mugshots. My husband's at one point was the Pee Wee's playhouse living room and at another point Jim & Pam from the office. It was just something we did for an added layer of fun.
That was Saturday night.
Fast forward to Monday afternoon.
I'm in full mom mode, setting kids up with activities. I have been signing Emory up for online art classes through a website called Outschool. You can basically live stream all types of classes that they get to take with an actual instructor and other kids. On this day I signed her up for a drawing class led by an elderly art teacher from Colorado, Miss Debbie. There are about 10 other kids in this class. I get all of Em's supplies she needs, set her up at her desk with snacks and the ipad. I go ahead and log her in to the class which is waiting to start. So she is in a type of limbo spot where she isn't really in the class yet. I tell her that when the class starts it will automatically launch the video. She's all set so I leave for a minute to check on her brother.
About 3 minutes later, I hear- "MOM! Ummm, something WEIRD is happening!!"
I automatically think of all of these horror stories about how Zoom has been hacked and showing inappropriate things in the middle of meetings & doctoral presentaions. I go rushing in. My daughter is wide eyed and nervous laughing. I look at the screen and see it.
Y'all. My HUSBAND decided that his last background picture of the game from SATURDAY would be a shirtless, super buff oiled up dude laying across silk sheets on a bed, on his side just smiling from ear to ear.
Which is NOW MY DAUGHTERS BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR HER ART CLASS VIDEO!!!!!
ACK!!!
I slammed the ipad shut and rushed to the living room. Dear sweet Jesus please do not let us still be logged in. Please tell me that wasn't just broadcast to 10 children who thought they were going to learn how to draw an otter! Pleeeeease tell me that sweet Miss Debbie from Colorado didn't just see my 8 year old girl with a half naked man as her background.
Emory is following me around the house laughing- "What was that?! Mom?! What the heck was that?? I thought someone was behind me & then I thought about how his boobies were bigger than my head!"
I mean. I don't even know what to do at this point. I grab my laptop and get her logged back in. WITHOUT the half naked man in the background. Get her set up & sneak off to the living room. I still to this minute have ZERO clue if anyone else saw that or not. Ignorance is bliss. Let's just say that no one acted scarred for life and I have yet to receive any angry emails.
I call Brian. "I don't know what you OWE ME, but you OWE ME BIG."
I fill him in on the shenanigans and he literally cannot stop laughing.
Seriously you guys, this was one of the top 5 most embarrassing moments of my life and I have had some doozies!
Moral of this story- don't try to do nice things for you kids. Or if you do at least make sure you check the Zoom background first.
Pray for this Mama.
p.s.- here's the link I promised (I added the classroom link as well)
www.outschool.com