Gathering via Zoom isn’t as good as the real thing, but during a pandemic you get what you get | Jenice Armstrong

Earlier this month, Angelita Byrd decorated her house with balloons and invited friends from around the world — one guest lives in Japan and another called in from Colombia.

Zoom, the videoconferencing app, made it possible for me to watch as the birthday girl gave a speech and danced around her Fairmount home to Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall.”

… Cause we’re the party people night and day / Livin’ crazy that’s the only way

As the song played, my mind drifted back to Byrd’s birthday celebration a year ago. We were at Novak’s in Brewerytown. That same 1980s jam was playing. We were dancing in our seats. It was a good time. Back then, none of us knew what COVID-19 was. We had no idea that the world was about to be upended.

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Fast forward a year and we were once again partying, only this time from our individual homes, where we’ve been quarantining for weeks to stem the spread of the coronavirus. You’d think we would have been grumpy about being cooped up and having to interact online. But no one complained. We were glad to be able to connect over a glass of wine and see faces other than the ones with whom we had been isolating.

So, when people send me Instagram videos of rowdy teens blatantly disobeying the stay-at-home order at a so-called COVID-19 party, or I watch Fox 29 footage of customers congregating outside a South Philly water ice establishment, it’s upsetting, but I get it. They may know better, but people can’t help but congregate on certain street corners and flock to Kelly Drive for exercise, even though it can be challenging to maintain the suggested six feet of space from others while on the bike path. We are social creatures. Physically distancing ourselves from everyone outside our immediate household for weeks at a time is hard.

Still, it’s what we must continue to do to try and keep the virus from spreading. Especially since so many people may have the virus but are asymptomatic and can still pass it to others.

So, for now at least, I’m all about the Zoom life. It’s handier than you’d think. My husband virtually attended a funeral. From his desktop, he was able to join family members from across the country and watch as a relative was buried in Canada.

A friend went to a gender reveal party on Zoom. People use it for blind dates. Some colleges, including Harvard, plan to livestream graduation ceremonies via the app. Teachers go on to connect with students. I am trying to organize a cousins’ get-together on Zoom since most of us only see each other at weddings and funerals.

“Virtual happy hours, virtual birthday parties, and virtual weddings are the thing that is hot right now because people still want to come together and feel unified even though we are physical distancing,” said Paul Zahn, a Los Angeles-based event planner whose tips about hosting a virtual happy hour were featured in Forbes last month. “There are plenty of ways to stay social between Instagram Live, Zoom, Skype, FaceTime. It’s our new normal for now, so I think people should embrace it.”

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As for Byrd, she plans to host another Zoom party on Saturday, this time with a “We Are the World” theme. Guests are supposed to dress according to the country we want to represent. I’ll be there. I’ll figure out something apropos to wear. I feel lucky to have something to distract me from all the suffering that’s taking place.

I would hate, though, for the Zoom life to become our new normal.

But for now, it is all we have.