“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

 

Gone through all your books. Seen everything there is to see on television. Checked all your social media sites and only saw snow pictures. Cooked all the favorite recipes and are now out of ingredients. Played all the online games. The dog can go out by itself because you don’t feel the need to sludge through the lovely whiteness. Junk food has become a 3-course meal and you are trying to figure out when it is time to open the alcohol. Kids are bouncing off the walls because it is a snow day. Too tired to take off your sweat pants and put on your workout sweat pants to get on the treadmill under all your other blankets. Can’t remember when the last time you brushed your teeth.

The snow has just intensified pandemic isolation.

What you really miss is ‘hanging out’.

Hanging out is just the few friends you can spend time with doing nothing. It is socializing for no reason.

These are the folks you can sit in a room with without talking to each other. Each is as comfortable as an old sweater and all seem to fit well together.

Hanging out meant going to a ball game or a bar or a dance or show or movie all together as a shared experience. Each came away with a different perspective, but you all will remember the time you were together.

Well, those times are over.

There are restrictions on how many of you can be in the same room six-feet apart, wearing face diapers and rubber gloves.

At first it was just a bunch of boys or girls getting together. They would play ball or mubbly-peg or princes and doll houses (depending on your orientation). As you got older, the group would become more diverse. Kids would move or go to another school and new kids filled the vacancies.

‘Hanging out’ could mean different groups of kids for different reasons. There could be the ‘school group’ or the ‘country club’ group or the ‘Latin Club’ group (but I never knew them).

In the good ole days, hanging out just was a reason for a party. The core group would seek out opposite sex to gather with them on a prescribe time and date at a prerequisite site. It could be as simple as cutting the rug in your parent’s basement to some serious necking action. Each tried to persuade the other with antics, dance moves and good haircuts so as the night progressed each could explore teenage indecent liberties.

The ‘gang’ or ‘family’ would come up for air, cram into a car and drive to some distant site then ask, “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

Sometimes this pairing would become couples known as going ‘steady’. Sometimes this turned into marriage and years later they can’t remember when.

Other times, one person attracted attention from one across the room. That was when it became difficult to ‘hang out’.

As the music got louder than the parent’s could ignore and the second-hand clothing and long hair annoyed the neighbors, ‘hanging out’ took a new meaning.

Then came drinking and drugs and the kids needed a place to partake and not be under a watchful eye. When the parents were out or someone knew someone who would let us crash, we’d gather but with a purpose.

Turning on the television and turning down the sound, everyone would make his or her own movie. Laughter is a part of being together.

If total exhausting didn’t overcome, amorous behavior started and everyone parted ways.

Like any pack, some die, some move away, some have families, some go to jail and most lose touch with each other. Everyone lives their lives.

Occasionally there is cause for a reunion of sorts of these once upon a time fast friends. After the usual hugs and backslaps, the ole tales come to the surface with many interpretations and remembrance. Phones are passed around with images of children and grandchildren (just like on social media) then the tone will turn to ailments and disease. No one will speak about the second marriage or domestic violence or abandoned children or number of dogs that have gone. Is there a spreadsheet of the number of houses, cars, bicycles, hospital visits, affairs, vacations or assortment of pills needed to get through the day?

Still we will sit for hours and watch “Friends” or “Seinfeld” or “Cheers” or any show where folks are just ‘hanging out’ enjoying each other’s company. We will think back to places, but it wasn’t the brick and mortar location, it was the people that were there at the time.

Nothing was so enjoyable as the people we were ‘hanging out’ with.

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”