Tag: socializing

Perspectives

My wife shared a friend’s anecdote.

She hadn’t seen the friend in a while. They have a regular gang that meet for coffee at Growlers after exercises classes each M-W-F morning.

Converted from an old gas station, Growlers, nominally a purveyor of beers, is in downtown Ashland. It actually shares its space with a small coffee shop. It’s normally not busy in the morning. That allows the coffee gang to pull together tables and make noise as they please. Outdoor seating with firepits is available, and that’s where they’ll typically be.

The gang is a flexible group with active lives, so the group meeting ranges from four to fifteen people. They’re mostly women. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers, retired teachers, programmers, nurses, musicians, accountants, architects, artists, firefighters, college professors, and so on. They’re characters, and have been coming to the same exercise class, with the same instructor, Mary, for over thirty years. My wife, in her mid-sixties, is the youngest. She started the coffee gant back when she began taking the class after we moved here in 2006. Always pursuing fitness, when she arrived here, she began looking for a new exercise routine, and heard about Mary’s Y class. That’s where she was told this tale this morning.

Weirdly, my wife doesn’t like the coffee at Growler’s, so she has tea.

“We’ve downsized,” L said. L is the friend. “I’m 76 and my husband is 82. We had a 3,000 foot home and five and half acres just outside of Ashland. We were talking and agreed, we don’t need all this property. So we sold our place and bought a smaller one here in town.

“Well, after we’d sold our property, the new owners called us. They wondered if we could meet at our old house and walk the property line with them so they can learn about their new land. Naturally, we agreed, so a time and place was set.

“We’d never met them. Well, we got out of the car to wait, and then they arrived. Well, they were older than us! Both had walkers.

“Then they told us, they were downsizing, too. We were speechless.”

I laughed when I was told the story and wondered, moving into a 3000 square foot home with some land while downsizing, just how big was their last place?

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The Writing Moment

Deeply immersed in an intensive writing session, he struggled coming out and adjusting to the light, sound, and activity outside of his head. Encountering an energetic, talkative friend, he could do little but smile and nod. After they parted, she probably thought him rude or something. He should have a tee shirt made that says, “I’m not being anti-social, but I’ve been writing.” ‘Cause the writing stays on even when he walks away from the session. If there’s an off-switch, he’s not sure where it is.

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A Long Dream

A long dream, but not much happening.

I dream of food often, as often as cars, perhaps. Food was heavily featured in this one.

I was outside on grass but under an enormous pavilion. A celebration was planned. I showed up early to help with setup. It unfolded with lazy grace. First, a group of us put out tables and chairs. People arrived with food. Some are friends, but many are strangers. I tell them where to put their food. It’s a wonderful, relaxed scene.

At last, everyone is there and we’re starting. People wander around tables of food, checking the offerings and asking where they can find specifiic food. There’s a barbecue grill setup. Others are trying to light it but can’t. I show them how to do it. A little later, another friend is trying to light the grill. He’s doing it wrong. I’m about to explain how to light it when he figures it out and lights it. I find a plate of food and a place to sit.

Strange to have such a long, relaxed dream, like a day out of life, where we’re all just having a good time, being together. Perhaps it’s a manifestation by my subconscious of being out and socializing during this pandemic era. Or, maybe my mind is having a small celebration in honor of Joe Biden’s victory, and the changes that means.

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Floofzoid Personality Disorder

Floofzoid Personality Disorder (floofinition) – Uncommon condition in which people prefer socializing with animals and consistently shy away from interaction with humans.

Symptoms

If you have floofzoid personality disorder, it’s likely that you:

  • Prefer being alone with animals
  • Have and enjoy close relationships with animals
  • Have difficulty expressing emotions and reacting appropriately to situations unless you’re speaking with animals

In use: “You may have floofzoid personality disorder if you sit alone at parties until you see the hosts’ pet and become animated, calling it over, petting it, and playing with it.”

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The Beer Group

The weekly beer group would’ve met last night under ordinary circumstances. These being ordinary circumstances, they did not.

As a group, we range in size from six to sixteen attendees on most week. Volunteerism and traveling to visit family are the usual culprits pruning our numbers. We range in age from sixty to eighty-eight. Several college professors, computer programmers and coders, a physicist, doctor, and wildlife management people and biologists make up our group. Death has taken two since I joined it, an eon ago.

Businesses are re-opening in Ashland, Oregon. Technically, we could’ve met last night, wearing masks and social-distancing. These limitations made me laugh, right? We’re already on a group that struggles to hear one another. Imagine us now six feet apart trying to do that. Add the mask. Then, let us drink the beer.

You’d think with all this intelligence in the group, someone would devise a solution, something akin to the shower curtains being deployed in some restaurants, or the little greenhouses in Amsterdam, but no. We didn’t meet.

Think it’ll be a while before we do.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

This song, “Goodbye Stranger”, arrived in the stream after watching people at the coffee shop and on the streets, and inadvertently eavesdropping (they speak, I have ears…it happens).

A woman regularly brings her dog into the coffee shop. She usually sits back by the community table, where I like to work when I can. Her dog is often a cause for conversations with others. So I’ve learned that her dog is a rescue from an animal hoarding situation, that she’s had to work with him, that his name is Atlas, that he does much better now, but that other dogs’ barking makes him nervous, that he is her service dog. I’ve learned others had dogs like him, or saved from similar situations. He’s often compared to a Ridgeback but he isn’t one, not a true Ridgeback, she says.

But I’ve never heard her name, or why she needs a service dog, nor why she is bald. She wears dark glasses, but she watches people, back from her space by the wall, with her service dog beside her…

I’ve decided that I don’t want coffee shop friendships. I’m there to work. Cruel of me, innit? So I keep myself to myself, but as I leave each time, I feel her eyes watch me, and imagine I turn my head and say, “Goodbye, stranger.”

But I don’t. It has caused the 1979 Supertramp song to find itself in my stream.

 

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