By
Esther C. Baird
First Published in the Chronicle Transcript Apr. 29, 2021
This year has been low on random human interactions.
We’ve been locked away from the side comments of our favorite grocery clerk, from the gas attendant who dances at night by the light of the pumps, and from the sing-songy barista at Starbucks (except in a tedious drive-thru where she’s just not as fun). This quieter world has been less colorful and less spicy.
Thankfully, some of the color has gone digital. I’ve relied heavily on a group chat that I’ve been in since 3 p.m. on Friday, March 13 of 2020. It’s been going strong, 24 hours a day, for over a year. As I’m typing it’s pinging (I put it on mute so I could focus on you, Regular Readers, at the expense of my wild and riveting social life).
There are three of us, and at any point in the day or night, when I, or they, feel the need to share angst, snark, an outfit idea, a political rant, a failed dinner, a belligerent teenager, a perfect cocktail, an unfair comment, an off tune song, an existential crisis, a pandemic meme, a heart break, a Zoom disaster, a theological tangle or anything whatsoever … we text our group.
One of the friends is my stand by Voice of Reason (VOR). She’s shown up in this column when, as the name implies, I’m being unreasonable — obviously that’s rare. She’s known me since college, so I like to think she can see the growth in my ability to react to things such as Poorly Written Rules That Don’t Apply To Me. (Look, I’m a writer, write the rules clearly and we’ll have no problems!)
Then there is our Younger Friend who still has the energy and enthusiasm of a 30 something because … she’s still in her 30s. I know this because over the holidays she texted us a photo of herself in a festive smocked dress, matchy-matched to her brother who was stuck in an unfortunate Christmas romper.
“Weren’t we cute!? I was 10 in this Christmas photo,” she said.
My VOR calmly (I can sense calmness over text) replied, “Esther and I were sophomores in college when you took that picture.”
That’s her way of saying, “You’re ridiculously young, and we’re actually middle aged. That’s not something we can cope with in a pandemic, so knock it off!”
But despite, or probably because of, our age and personality differences, having the chat has provided the very core for what sanity I managed to maintain this last year. And now, slowly, life in technicolor with full taste (unless you had Covid) is returning.
For example, last week I was in Mom Wait Mode, sitting in a parking lot in the White Whoosh, while my younger daughter finished whatever she was doing. Who knows, who cares. Suddenly the back door rolled open and in hopped a lady dressed in chartreuse flowy pants, a bolero type cropped jacket, and big chunky black glasses. She was either running with the bulls or artsy. Either way, we would not find much common ground had we known each other, which we did not.
It was precisely the sort of interaction I had missed.
“Um, hello!” I said, in what I hoped was a cheerful voice that communicated, “this is not your van, your outfit is wild, but this may be the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in a year, maybe we should be new in-person friends!”
She looked at me and gasped. Then she searched for answers in her giant floral appliqué covered bag, which certainly was large enough to potentially hold them. And it did, because she looked up and declared, “This is not my van!”
She had an accent I couldn’t quite place. Did the accent explain anything? It did not.
“Nope. This is the White Whoosh,” I said.
“I’m so sorry …” she stared off into space through the back of my minivan, where she saw, on the other side, another white Toyota Sienna minivan.
“Oh, there it is! So sorry.” She said as she backed away in a blaze of color and flair.
“No worries.”
I watched her walk to her minivan and hop in the back seat where she sat, like me, for quite some time. Another mom? One who preferred the back seat? An actress doing performance minivan art? Were we not going to be new in-person friends then?
Obviously I texted my group chat and we debriefed on what it all meant — I determined it meant I needed a glass of wine. The Younger Friend agreed, but so did the VOR, which settled it. I don’t think my group chat will ever turn off now — it’s one of those much bandied- about silver linings to this last year: human interaction, friendship and laughter always at my fingertips.
And yet my crowd-loving, throngs of humanity inspired self, is also ready to take my turn jumping into a stranger’s minivan, though I likely will skip the bolero jacket.