Voting Rights

This meeting is so boring.

It’s seven at night and I’ve spent the day chasing grandkids so I just want to be in bed.  I don’t want to be sitting in a Zoom meeting.

Evelyn reports at length on which computer program we should use for the budget. A lively, 20-minute discussion ensues about different programs and their perceived merits.  Just shoot me now.

Sandra clicks in late to the meeting.  She appears to be lying down with her computer on her lap.  Let me tell you, that is not a good angle for a supermodel, let alone an aging woman in a pink sweatshirt.  Someone has gotten a little too relaxed at Zoom meetings.  That chick has a lot of nose hair.

“That’s not the way we do things in the Midwest!” Sandra suddenly says.  The meeting pauses. 

“I think budgets are about the same everywhere,” Toni replies.

“Budgets?!  We’re still talking budgets?”

Wait a minute!  The slurring, the lying down . . .  Sandra is either drunk or suffering a medical emergency.

This meeting just got a lot more interesting.  The rest of the committee seems to sense Sandra may not be working at full potential and the conversation hurries on to the next topic.

 “That’s what I said!” she shouts, apropos of nothing.

Do the others notice?  I see each of us glancing at the rest like skittish horses sensing a storm. 

An item comes up for a vote.

“Aye!” shouts Sandra.

“Sandra,” says the chair, “you are not a voting member of this committee.”

But she should be.  I would definitely attend more meetings like this.

“I’m not?” Sandra sits up so the nose hair slides blessedly out of view.  “Are you sure?”

The chairman takes a deep breath and nods.

“Then what the hell am I doing in this meeting?”  Sandra’s face disappears from the screen.

This meeting just became so boring.