Come Waste Your Time With Me

Errand-date stories

The Little Errand Girl

I am endlessly fascinated by the mishaps and fortuitous blips of time and space, atoms and circumstance that bring us together with our earthly tribes.  Family is obviously the most explored of these.  You don’t ask for them. At some points in your life, you don’t even want them, but you are magically tied by DNA, proximity, history, gravity, and the slowness of time.  And Christmas. 

But as you go, the categories of friendship expand - childhood friends, school friends, the friends of your 20s as you navigate first jobs, neighbors, co-workers and eventually, the parents of your kids friends. 

Categories be damned, what I love is the way that friends overlap over time, the way you find each other and the way you get to know each other.  The way, at my kids’ new school, I found the two or three people with whom I’d been in high school, and stood with them on the lawn, some weird solidarity in having survived adolescence and forgiven each other.

We collect new people and new memories with old people in the same way we fill our houses with new souvenirs, furniture and photos of adventures. 

Last week, I spent 6 days with my oldest friend in wild Costa Rica, adding to our list of adventures in a big way and unpacking the adventures of home and life at the same time. It was a culmination of choices and opportunities that I’ll talk about more once I’ve unpacked. 

But basically, it was just me accompanying a friend on an errand.  She had some yoga to learn. Going with her was supportive but also an obvious opportunity for me to see what I had to learn. 

And I’m a little obsessed with the errand date now. Watching each other navigate the customs line, the little Costa Rican grocery store - seeing how she made lists, what side of the road she would walk on, how to get a lizard out of your cottage - these things are wonderful to observe and you can’t help but learn something. 

At one point, I ended up hitching a ride with the people who owned our cottage and they let me accompany them to the fish monger - which was a group of open buildings, one with a sleeping surfer in it, one with deep freezers in it.  I watched them decide and haggle and it was my favorite thing because it was everyday life. 

An errand date is the same as a hang-out - it just gives you a purpose.  Like the time instead of going to dinner at Christmas, my old high school friend and I ran a quick errand to Target together instead and found ourselves having one of the best times and still getting our Christmas shit done. 

An errand date means you’re not just sitting and eating at each other.  And the stories can flow more freely because you’re engaged in tasks and looking at the world together, not just trying to entertain at dinner.  It deepens the friendship the way traumas can, the way work or travel can make you feel close.

“Come,” you say, “and help me run my errands today!” You don’t have to rhyme.  You just live in tandem with someone for a while.  

This would be an excellent gift, for example, to give to a person who is still carrying a baby in a bassinet car seat. First of all, those things are heavy - especially when you’re carrying one at 40. But mostly, the thrill of running into a store while someone stays in the car with a baby, is like freedom, like a space rainbow.  

My brother came in from out of town and took me and my baby to the doctor and then sat in the car while I ran into Babies R Us for breast pump accessories.  This is one of the kindest things he ever did for me. And

Errand-dating is fun because I love other people’s how-to opinions.  It doesn’t mean I adopt every habit, but I like seeing alternatives to how I do things, because I don’t believe that I do anything the right way.  (Shout-out to the Benedictine Sisters I worked with who believe in gathering opinions before making decisions for a group and who in doing so gave me permission to feel like I wasn’t just “self-conscious” or “not-confident” or “conflicted” but instead, a gatherer of information. This is my analytic side being allowed to frolic.)

It’s not an everyday thing of course.  (See my deer essay and my feelings on being narrated on the daily by my mother-in-law)  I don’t always like to have people follow me around the grocery store wondering why I don’t buy what’s on sale, or why I like what I like, but it can be enlightening in the right dosage. 

I have had a few errand dates that stick out as being especially noteworthy.

One: GG

In the last years of her life, I got to take my maternal grandma grocery shopping a couple of times. I loved to see what treats she bought herself (frozen chocolate bananas) and how she managed (slowly).  She would look at things and remember when she used to buy them all the time, or what her husband liked, or she would scrunch up her nose at and fake-pout about what she used to do and how her life had changed.  

Shopping with your grandma teaches you how high those shelves are and how important those half-loaves of bread! It also shows you the kindness of those now-understood-as-essential workers. Enter Maureen…

My grandma rolled her full grocery cart over to the self-checkout line and when I started to help, she said, “Oh no, Maureen will do it for me.”  And with that, the self-checkout attendant came and checked out her entire order.  Why she didn’t just go to the regular lane, I don’t know. She and Maureen had an understanding that by “self” checkout, that really meant Maureen.

I still say hi to Maureen when I go to that store, and I tell her how much my grandma and I appreciated her. And she says she misses my grandma. 

Two: Becky took me to Costco.  

I had never been! Crazy, I know. I shopped at Sam’s when I was first married and made a fool of myself, and wasted food. I don’t trust my instincts. 

Also I’m a pathetic shopper, constantly aware that I am being manipulated or even bullied by marketing tactics too strong for my little brain. I grumble at the music in the aisles, I forget things or I buy ingredients and then forget what I was going to make with them.

And I’ve been shopping so much online since Covid, only rarely doing extra shopping in the big grocery stores. In general, I pay extra sometimes for the luxury of not having to think too hard or do extra math, or drive too far for a deal.  It’s a luxury no doubt, but we all choose our little luxuries.  

This is why Becky was the perfect person to take me on my first trip to Costco.  

Do you not know Becky? Well, you should. She is a ball of energy, always moving and thinking and she has very strong opinions that are always backed up by mathematical facts and deductive reasoning. She texts in bullet points. So, you know, not me. I had every faith that she would know what is good to buy there and what the benefits are.  

And she did.  We navigated the maths of the bulk paper aisle. We found a new way of dividing candies for teacher gifts, and we hit the liquor store good and hard.  On the way home I made a quick detour to an old Navy to find something specific for my daughter.  I was having such fun and so I remarked how much I like an errand date and how nice it is to go through these silly decisions and hear another person’s point of view.  

“Oh no!” she said. “And what, do you think, you’ve learned about me on this adventure?”

“Well, I can’t say I learned anything but I enjoyed watching your brain work.”

“Would you like me to give you my objective observations on you?”

Depending on the friend, you know the answer to this question.  For this friend, whose heart is the most sincere thing on earth, the answer was absolutely yes, even if it hurt. I smiled and braced myself.  

Actually, I knew it couldn’t hurt because I know myself and am harder on myself than she could ever be.  So this was a lot like reading a horoscope and placing yourself in it. Kind of fun.

She said, “When you're shopping, your decisions appear to be very… random.  Is that ok to say? You show nearly excessive restraint in some areas and then make spontaneously easy decisions about others.”  

She also pointed out my lack of a list - which was really true also because I’m not really familiar with Costco, but also, yes.  I generally make a list, leave it at home and work creatively from there.  This is indicative of a life’s pattern.  

Part improv, part planning but who knows where one ends and the other begins.  I make plans but find that I rarely follow them as the day seems to present itself as some other character needing mollifying.  “Okay,” I say to the day, “I see where this is headed.”  

Some would see this as a lack of discipline, a lack of strategy and they would be right.  But the bullet points are still in there even though it seems I’ve deviated.  The lists do get accomplished somehow. But never in their correct order. 

I just heard the expression “How you do anything is how you do everything” for the first time and now I’m mad. I’ve always thought it and now it’s accusing me of being myself. I feel like I’m in a “stop hitting yourself” trap. 

The point is, Becky, I did learn a little something about myself and my habits, thank you very much. And my randomness will be self-scrutinized just a little bit more thanks to you. xoxo

Three: a Blind Errand-Date

I called my friend in Chicago to tell him I would be there with my daughters (ages 2 and 5) while my husband was on business and would he be available for some daytime outing (read: I needed help). The answer: “No, but you really should call my girlfriend who you’ve never met, and ask her to come out with you.” My answer: “okey dokey.”  This is the land of improv, after all. 

When I called, we immediately talked like old friends and she said she’d love to take us to the zoo but the thing was, she had to turn in a couple of teaching resumes and that would take a while on the trains. 

Instead, I picked her up in a minivan and introduced her to the girls.  We got to know her as we drove her to a couple of schools to drop off her resume. We saw different parts of the city we wouldn’t have seen and then we hit the zoo where she helped me immensely.  It was such a perfect way to meet someone, to hit the ground running.  

She’s had that teaching job ever since. Yay, us.

The Big One: Nicki’s Last Shopping Trip

I really don’t know how I ended up being there that day.  It was summer and I had promised I’d come more often when school was out.  I knew that she had been very sick but I hadn’t realized how close to the end she was. 

Her family and friends had her set up with these love-filled routines and trays of favorite things, to keep her clean and feeling good.  Lotions and candles and deodorants whose names she delighted in, whose packaging she found comforting. I hadn’t been in on all of the jokes but I knew a few.

She was the kind of person who had a routine with everyone - their favorite old jokes, the names they called each other.  To her, I was my full name, first and middle, followed by “what are you doing?”  And then she’d tell the same story about her visiting me in Chicago or going into the bad part of town when we were younger. 

We went to high school together but then we ended up being friends through a different college group, and then she lived next to my mom for a time, and, it turned out, my uncle was her godfather.  Who knew? 

I’ve visited plenty of people in the hospital before. You remark on the room, you try to make a joke, you hold hands. You don’t usually take them shopping. She was still in her house but in a hospital bed. We sat her up to have something to eat and suddenly she was taken with the spirit, wanting to sit up at the table. That, in itself, was an ordeal. 

But then she was saying “what are we doing today?  I want to go shopping.”  Her mom’s eyes got big, wondering where this energy was coming from. It’s awful to tell someone no, you’re too weak, so we blathered and evaded.  But she went on, “call my dad.  You tell him to come here and that I want to go to Bed Bath and Beyond and I want to go to TJ Maxx. He’s got a car and I got a handicap sticker.” 

She was not to be dissuaded.  But she also could barely lift herself from her wheelchair.  We needed manpower.  So I called my uncle/her godfather, and we all drove her to her favorite shopping place.  We carried the wheelchair out and dropped her in front with two people while her dad parked. 

And we shopped.  We didn’t talk about death or the end.  We talked about shower curtains and the stupid things she loved there, and the purses she wished they had at TJ Maxx.  I’m sure we got some stares. We must have been a sight.  But she was laser-focused on the mission.   

When she got home, she was so exhausted but so happy. 

When you’re not the one who is there doing everything every day, saying yes to people is easy. It’s so rare that people just tell you what you can do to make them happy. (The gift of asking for help is so underrated!) 

If only it was always that easy!  And the gift she gave to me is, now, I have this bizarre memory that I can share with her dad and mom and my uncle.  We were allowed to do something for her besides pat her hand and make the stupid jokes I’m prone to make or rehash the same story for the hundredth time. We made new memories up until the end.

At its core, it was just an errand date at a really special time. But boy am I glad I got to take that trip with her. 

Looking for other options to spend more time with friends? Here’s a lovely article from the website Cup of Jo.