GenChat-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: [GenChat-L] Visiting, Part II...
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 15:09:39 EDT

Fellow Chatters,

A number of folks wrote me privately to discuss how things have changed, and
how they, too miss the visits - surprise and otherwise - of friends and
relatives...

After I wrote that, I thought about how I have stopped making the visits...Not
just my friends - me, too...So this morning I called a friend and invited him
and his wife over for a Saturday burger-fest - bring your own drinks, and
we'll supply the ice and the burgers and buns and fixin's...During the course
of our conversation, he asked me if I had talked with a mutual friend
recently...I said that no, I hadn't...Well, it seemed to me that Saturday
would be a good time to get with him and his wife, too, so after I got off the
phone, I called him...

It's now 2:00 PM, and we have six couples coming over for dinner (the midday
dinner, not the Yankee dinner...LOL...)...And abour three o-clock or so, we're
piling into two vans and heading to New Orleans to meet with two other
couples, one of which lives there, and the other of which is flying in from
Buffalo, New York Thursday night (I met him two weeks ago on the Internet -
he's a fellow re-enactor, and portrays the same Confederate artillery company
we do)...So we're going to do it up brown Saturday night in New Orleans,
hurricane permitting, and I'm going to make a point one night every week of
imposing myself and my wife on a friend...

In fact, several of us have already begun talking about having a monthly
"boys' night out" where we'll get together for some greasy fast food and a
movie, and then sit around and talk...

Visiting isn't what it used to be, not even when I was a teenager...I always
thought I had things to do back then, and that I was busy, but we still
visited...I like to think I'm busier now, but maybe I've just become more
insular...

Whatever the cause - and I am STILL certain that air conditioning and central
heat play major roles in the loss of community and the decline of the casual
visit - it seems to me that I can do something about it...

It's about time my kids learned what it is to go visiting...

I'll just have to dig out the little cartes d'visite my wife and I had made at
a re-enactment last year, just in case no one is home...LOL...

Chas

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