When I was a kid, I remember fondly how people would just drop by our house unannounced. Sometimes it would be a friend of one of my brothers; other times those stopping by came from my overly extended Catholic family.
It wasn’t totally unreasonable for several people to drop by at the same time, as if drawn by an invisible “visitation magnet,” pulled to the Zerr house by some unknown force. This was particularly true on a Sunday afternoon. Relatives would flock to the house to visit, have some coffee, chat about whatever chattable topics came up, and hug and kiss us kids as if they had never seen us before, even though they had seen us just the weekend before.
Inevitably I would walk away from these welcomes with bright red lipstick on each cheek, certain that my aunts had dabbed on half a tube just so they could leave a lasting impression. True to form, my male relatives would either look at me with a vacant gaze, faux punch me in the stomach or actually punch me in the arm.
I always loved these times, in large part because whatever chores were on the docket for that particular day instantly went out the window. After all, it was considered rude in my family to mow the lawn or clean our room when company came calling.
Occasionally the visitors would be my Uncle Guy and Aunt Linna. Uncle Guy would suddenly get the idea in his head that he should come visit us, so he and Linna would hop in his big Cadillac and jet over to my house.
This wouldn’t even be worth mentioning except that Uncle Guy and Aunt Linna lived in California. This didn’t seem to bother my uncle much, largely because he didn’t believe in such silly things as speed limits and would regularly top out at 95 on the freeway to cut a few hours off the drive.
Thankfully, Uncle Guy didn’t feel an equally strong need to drive back home the next day or even the day after that. He and Aunt Linna would instead billet at out house, the boys giving up their rooms to make room for the unexpected guests.
This was a good tradeoff because we would continue to get out of doing any chores around the house as long as guests were visiting.
I guess people in that era just expected visitors to drop by because my mom would always whip up some fantastic appetizers (re: crackers and squeeze cheese) and meals from out of nowhere, she never seeming to need to go to the store for more food.
I still keep this practice alive in my own home. Unfortunately, in this day and age, people just don’t drop in when they’re in the neighborhood anymore. For some reason, it’s considered rude. I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard a friend say, “I drove by your house the other day.” I always ask, “Why didn’t you stop by?” And they say, “I didn’t want to be a burden.”
What? How can a visit by a friend ever be a burden? I really love it when friends just drop by. Well, I would love it, but they never do.
A couple weeks ago I talked to one of my very close friends. She didn’t really have any plans for the evening and I mentioned we were making chili with cornbread. I said, “Come on over” and the reply was, “Really? Are you sure I won’t be interrupting anything?”
Interrupting? Really? Friends are like family. They don’t need an invitation. All they have to do is swing by the cul-de-sac and see if our two cars are here. Chances are really good that if they are, we will be too.
I’m not really sure just when this all changed – the time between the time when people were expected to drop by, then weren’t.
I like to blame it on the cellphone. In the old days it was too much trouble to find a pay phone to drop a dime in and call ahead. It was just easier to drive by the house and see if someone was home.
We almost always were back in the day. Rarely did we have a family trip to anywhere. We had a huge yard filled with adventure. Who needed Disneyland when you had my yard? There was always some grand adventure in the works, from digging holes to China and camping in the Japanese parachute-tent to trying to keep bats from making nests in our hair at twilight.
Looking back, I can see why everyone wanted to visit our house. There was always something going on – races on our racetrack that covered the pool table in the playroom, a stock car out in the yard, a pool, several tree houses in the woods, toy guns to shoulder, field hockey, concrete roads for the Tonka toys, and when all else failed, there was always a shovel, a can of gas and our fertile imaginations.
For those of you thinking about visiting me sometime unannounced, I still have a shovel and a fertile imagination. The gas is just down the road. We can have lots of grand adventures around here, but you have to show up first.
That means no calling ahead, unless you just happen to be a few blocks away and want to make sure we’re not in the middle of doing the horizontal mambo. I admit that I would appreciate that.
Still, we’d gladly put our clothes back on in a rush, if you won’t burst out into laughter when I show up at the door looking somewhat askew, my shirt tail sticking out of my fly, my hair messed and tussled and my face still a bit flummoxed.
On second thought, maybe the days of just dropping by are in the past for a reason. A very good one at that.
In the Emerald City, checking my fly before answering the door,
– Robb