Lights, Camera, Comb -- It's Covid Time (June 24, 2020 column)

There's nothing I trust less – a random anecdote, a suspicious Abraham Lincoln quote, Donald Trump – than my own memory.

This is so common among my peers that it's hardly worth mentioning, and most times is marked by an eye roll or some other shorthand to indicate that the source material is unreliable. "I remember..." is usually followed by this shorthand, alerting the listener to beware. I could be making the whole thing up.

Again, if you're around my age or older, I don't even have to mention it. The need to fact-check our own recollections is part of the process, something responsible people do automatically. We assume errors in recall and look for backup.

Or, we double down like a crooked police detective trying to affirm a bad bust, inventing evidence to support our story. All of this is bad.

The following is suspect, then. I will stand by my story until someone points out the error, but I'm going to assume some errors.

One night many, many years ago, my father came home from work with a tape recorder. It was a small reel-to-reel machine, and here's where my memory immediately goes off the rails. I know I'm probably conflating this gadget with the one seen at the beginning of "Mission Impossible," the one that self-destructs five seconds after playing the secret message.

It was just small, almost a toy, and I have no idea where my dad got it. It's possible he was using it to record voice memos or whatever the equivalent usage would have been in the early 1960s in his situation. It was just a machine.

It just wasn't common yet. In a few years, cassette players would start to show up in American households, but before that tape recorders were for hobbyists and audiophiles. Music was vinyl; the rest was technical.

I knew what it was, though, and what it was for. My father handed the little microphone to me, nodding that it was OK for me to record myself, and I immediately ran to the bathroom to comb my hair.

That's what I remember, anyway, my dad laughing at me, reminding me that no one would be able to see my cowlick on the tape, but I was 6 or 7 years old and it was Showtime.

It's just a funny memory, specific enough to make me think there's some truth there. I do know that tape recorder stuck around for years, long after the novelty faded. Nature eventually provided remedies for pesky cowlicks. It's just a story.

But I thought about it the other day, when I suddenly realized that I was brushing my teeth before an impending Zoom call. It's Showtime for everybody now.

I'm hardly a stranger to video calls, being a grandparent in the 21st century. New technology is developed by young brains, but stick it between us and a grandchild and we'll be early adopters, you bet.

So this is more of the same, but "more" is the operative word. Technology that's been practical, useful, and available for more than a decade only became common once it became necessary. Overnight, it seems, we became used to seeing rows of boxes filled with sometimes confused faces, peering at screens, determined to stay in touch.

And we're getting better at it. I have several regular video conferences every week now, and I've noticed improvement. It's the perfect environment for self-correction; get a glimpse of yourself, staring down at the phone in your lap, noticing the striking resemblance to Jabba the Hut, and you'll up your game pretty quickly.

We've moved past the "Is this thing on?" stage, in other words, from practical to performative. Lighting has improved. I've noticed some ladies wearing makeup, and while looking a little ragged is part of the Covid chic, we're all making more of an effort. There are few cowlicks to be seen, although it's not perfect.

In fact, one of the happiest things about this horrible time for me has been watching people intermittently forget that the Zoom window is not, in fact, a mirror. A conversation will be rolling along pleasantly, and then someone notices a blemish or a hair out of place and it gets fun. I've known cats that are less fussy about grooming.

It's been a pleasant surprise. I had a long conversation with old friends last week, three men unaccustomed to staring into cameras, and it felt natural and unremarkable, really. I participated in a script reading with a bunch of actors I didn't know, sitting in rooms around the planet. I've had book discussions and planning sessions.

You don't need me to tell you that things are bad. I'm a natural optimist and I've got plenty of hope currently, but I trust that feeling about as much as I do old memories. I'm constantly looking for verification.

And I think I may have found some, just a little, in the ways so many of us have adjusted. We ache for human contact, long for physical touch, yearn for the days when we could breathe the same air and not imagine floating globs of virus particles, but we adapt.

If we have to stare at a webcam for the duration, then that's what we'll do. We're all grandparents now. We need to see faces, and we're managing. We're even combing our hair.

I'm probably the only one brushing his teeth. As I said, it's Showtime.