My Two-Cents: Errand Hangouts
Recently I’ve been watching a fair amount of Seinfeld; it’s kind of become my lunch-break show. (Speaking of watching tv while you eat, it makes me feel like the epitome of an iPad kid. But in this specific case, I think the iPad kids might have figured something out.) It’s a show about nothing yet everything – picking apart the minutia of daily life and all of its so-called paradigms. Because small things have the ability to be simultaneously prose and profound. I read somewhere, “I’m afraid of small things but not of big things,” and in a weird way, it made sense. In Seinfeld’s midst of picking apart the habitual, I noticed that Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer are never alone. They tend to errand-hangout. Go to the laundry mat together, tag along to appointments, etc. In a show about nothing, it seems plausible that the characters would hang out while doing nothing. But it struck a chord with something in me – so I immediately texted my middle-aged aunt and asked if this sharp contrast to the current realm is what life was like circa the 90s. She confirmed my question – errand-hangouts were a common thing. Nowadays, I feel like this concept is kind of obsolete and even a bit socially odd. So I chewed on this thought for probably a lot longer than I should of, but I ended up savoring some flavor I want to elaborate on.
Pre-y2k ish there was a lack of instant communication and smartphones in our pockets. So it makes sense that people brought their friends with them to do little tasks because they didn’t have the means to keep them friends if they weren’t with them. Now we can keep our friends in our pockets. And assuming you wear pants/shorts/an article of clothing on your bottom half, your pockets are always with you. So your friends (physically) don’t have to be.
My phone empowers me to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and by myself. I can talk on the phone with them in my car while I run errands. I can text them while waiting in line at the grocery store. All these things are nice because I now only see some of my friends once in a blue moon, so I enjoy being able to keep up with them when we're not in the same proximity. But I can’t help by wonder if my liking for this independent and virtually connected lifestyle is faux. Maybe it would be nice to go about my day disconnected and savoring the moment while maintaining relationships through in-person errand-hangouts. Last week, a friend was swinging through town and stopped by to pick up a couple things as I was doing laundry – so she helped me fold clothes as we chatted and caught up. After she left, I realized that this occurrence wasn’t really a norm anymore. Which contrasted how I grew up – I remember my grandma stopping by our house when she was in town as my mom was folding clothes/ vacuuming / some other chore, and my grandma picking up a pile and folding as they chatted. An errand-exchange relationship. One that didn’t require some sort of fancy plan, some dinner reservation, or other. A simple catch-up while you're tackling a task, allowing you to keep up-to-date with your friend. Then after the exchange, you go back to your life until the next time you catch up in person.
The medium through which we keep up with our relationships has definitely shifted and evolved, and the errand-hangout has become somewhat un-vogue. But since all trends cycle, I’m kind of hoping it’ll make a comeback. Low-rise jeans were recently resuscitated (sadly), so maybe un-exotic errand-hangouts will have their return to center stage as well. The simplistic act of keeping your friends just by running to the grocery store with them. There is a time and place for independence and our phones enhance that. But dependence is intrinsic to who we are in a sense: the only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are. That’s why I'm rooting for the resuscitation of errand-hangouts.
