{"id":29939,"date":"2020-04-17T00:01:47","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T07:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=29939"},"modified":"2020-04-17T00:01:47","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T07:01:47","slug":"i-miss-my-acquaintances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/i-miss-my-acquaintances\/","title":{"rendered":"I Miss My Friends. But I Miss My Acquaintances More — Sheltering at Home Week 5"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"I<\/a>
I miss my acquaintances — including the women who take exercise classes with me at the gym. To its credit, management at the gym has organized on-line Zoom classes, and there’s time at the end of the class to wave hello to my yoga and Zumba classmates. Nice. Photo by Jon Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sheltering at Home, Week 5<\/strong><\/p>\n

I miss my friend Jean. We are overdue for a hike at Pt. Reyes. I miss my kids. And I’d give anything to be able to scoop up my baby granddaughter and kiss the hair on her head. Do I miss family and friends? Of course. But the thing about family and friends is, you can call them up and chat, and they’ll be glad to hear from you.<\/p>\n

You can’t do that with acquaintances. What’s the phone number of the saleswoman at our neighborhood card shop who’s been selling me birthday cards for years? I don’t know her name, let alone her phone number or email address. She doesn’t know my name either. But she knows exactly who I am.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>
Streaming on Amazon Prime in our den: The Zumba Super Dance Party Workout. A workout, yes. But a familiar face, no.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can call up a friend if you are feeling lonesome. How do you call up the saleslady at the Hallmark store?<\/p>\n

I miss my acquaintances. I miss the Zumba ladies at my gym. The short one with freckles, who likes to talk about writing. The redhead, who made me feel at home when I showed up for my first Zumba class ten years ago.<\/p>\n

I miss all those people who’s names I have to stop and think to remember, who’s jobs and professions I never quite got a handle on. The people I think of as mere acquaintances. Except, it turns out, they aren’t so mere.<\/p>\n

I Miss My Acquaintances — They Were Everywhere<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The seamstress at the dry cleaners who’s hemmed more than one pair of pants to fit my on-the-short-side legs. The greeter at my church. The friends of friends at parties. The smart people in my super-sized book group — yes, I might recall what they had to say about “Jude the Obscure,” but, no, they aren’t quite friends.<\/p>\n

They’re my acquaintances and I miss them.<\/p>\n

I tried turning on the TV to video stream some Zumba classes. Good dancers. Cool moves. Very slick. And they did get me dancing and working up a nice sweat. But I was practically in tears by the end of the first session, grape-vining across the carpeted floor of our den, all by myself. Those splashy dancers were . . . splashy. But they weren’t my Zumba ladies.<\/p>\n

They weren’t my — dear to me — acquaintances.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

More about friendship at “A Friend’s Garden in Minnesota.”<\/a>\u00a0 You might like “Retired Is a State of Mind.<\/a> Six Ways to Know If You’re There Yet.” More coronavirus chronicles at Sheltering at Home<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"I<\/a><\/p>\n

I miss my acquaintances. I miss the shopkeepers, the women in my Zumba class, the friends of friends, all the people who know me, but don’t know my name. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,41],"tags":[2243,2254,2179,34,655,2255,82,2184,2256,2214,659],"class_list":["post-29939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-sheltering-at-home-chronicles","tag-acquaintances","tag-amazon-prime","tag-coronavirus","tag-dont-miss","tag-friends","tag-lonely","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-sheltering-at-home","tag-video-streaming","tag-zoom","tag-zumba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}