The Rubber Chicken Joined My Meeting
Maya Torres
3 min read · Sep 9
My colleagues now ask after him by name.
Muted, camera on, one important call — and a four-year-old in a cape who had something to contribute.
The call was fine. The call was going well. I had the good lighting, the notebook I never write in, and a mug positioned to suggest a person who has things under control.
Then a superhero entered the frame behind me holding a rubber chicken above his head like a trophy, and made eye contact with the camera, not me. He knew exactly which audience mattered.
I did the thing every parent does, which is to keep talking in a calm professional voice while making increasingly wild hand signals off-camera, a performance nobody has ever successfully pulled off.
My boss, who has three grown children, said: "Is that the chicken? Bring him closer." We lost four minutes of the agenda and it was the best meeting of the quarter.
He now asks, most mornings, whether it's a "chicken day". Increasingly, I hope it is.
