hi-tech peekaboo

Videoconferencing brought our nuclear family together for a chat this evening. After a lengthy internal debate, I signed up for a Skype account and then arranged for my daughter to do the same from her dorm room. It was great to see her during our conversation. We experimented with a few visual effects like "fish eye" that had us laughing. Once in a while the image would freeze for a few seconds and then go back to normal. During one freeze, the three of us on this end ducked out of view of the camera so that when the video stream resumed it looked like we had disappeared. Another time, we replaced ourselves with a pair of CPR dummies that my son had borrowed for a demonstration speech at school. My daughter almost fell off her chair when the dummies appeared on her screen. Now I need to convince some of my friends in faraway places to Skype with me. I promise not to repeat the dummy gag.