This is the Sunday edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.
I went to college in NYC so my perspective on friendship there is a bit different. Our favorite activity during the day (this was the 1970s) was sitting in a coffee shop ordering successive cheap food and just yakking. Or we walked up Madison Ave on our way to the Met, looking in windows, back when it wasn't all chain and designer stores. In late middle age I have a lot of friends, but even pre-Covid most of them live elsewhere, and the ones nearby have a predilection for "doing" and "activities" and not hanging out. I've welcomed Covid as meaning, well, we can't do that, we have to sit on the front porch with blankets piled up and just talk.
My oldest friend from childhood and I were apart for 20+ years and then in our 40s she rather miraculously and accidentally wound up moving to the same town where I live now. We would sit and talk for hours in my living room or hers, and it was such a gift to be with someone who knew me (and her) in such depth. She had to move again to take care of her very elderly mother, and do I ever miss that idle hanging out, talking about what we were reading, watching, cooking, thinking, wishing, hoping, listening to, wearing, people around us, etc. etc.
Not sure that will happen, but we are still emailing and when we can travel, visiting! The great thing about a longstanding friendship like this is you just pick up where you left off.
I love this so much. I met my best friend in grad school and we spent so much time browsing the sale racks at Anthropologie that 1) we learned when they moved new stuff to sale and 2) when she moved away the staff asked me about her. The second most recent time I saw her, I flew to Toronto for one day and sat around while she packed for another international move and shopped for a present for a birthday party her daughter was attending and picked up the kids from school. The 6am and 8pm flights were absolutely worth it.
Also she has a subscription to this newsletter because while we don’t always observe official gifting occasions, we do also do occasional spontaneous “this is exactly the right thing” gifts.
My best friend is also an errand friend, but she's not a dude. My male friends I only see for intentional reasons; beer drinking around the firepit, for example, or band practice.
Errand destinations have included: Ace Hardware, Costco, Lowe's, Murdock's, Target, Michael's, Good Will, various other thrift shops, Albertson's, The Good Food Store, Eye Doctor, Bob Wards. The dump. Oh, and the liquor store, duh.
Same. My one remaining errand friend died this summer, and the ones before her moved away. The rest of my friends grew out of it as we aged and got busier, but I'm single and chronically ill and always available and it still suits my life and I miss it terribly.
I love this and I love and miss my Errand Friends. Re: the point about men, my partner's favorite activity to occupy his pandemic time is just calling any and all of his friends to shoot the shit for hours at a time. He'll go through a half-dozen contacts till SOMEONE answers and the conversations are just often a lot of "What have you been up to?" "What are you doing right now?" but it approximates normality, I guess. (I'm a noted hater of phone calls.) Lately this has included talking to his best friend on the phone through the duration of a football game they are both separately watching.
A key aspect of my Errand Friendships is that my friends had cars and I did not and it was largely their errands that we were running, but it meant that they'd just pick me up while they were out and about and I'd just stay with them until we got close to my apartment again or one of us had something else that needed to be done.
After ten years without a car, I now have one, and I am low key worried that my friends will stop calling me to say they’re in the neighborhood and want to know if I want to go to the grocery store or help them organize their waffle collection.
The richest and most vibrant parts of life seem to come when we are just kind of existing. Doing nothing much, going nowhere fast, devoid of a real mission (running to some shop to see what kind of Filson shirt you're not going to buy isn't really an objective, although it may be a hobby). It's the time that is devalued (not working, not completing something) that has the most worth.
I read this with great interest--I didn't know it was a thing other people enjoyed! I've never read anything about it before, or discussed it much with others. I am 43 (SAHP to 2) and four years ago befriended a woman 15 years younger when we worked retail together. She's the only errand friend I've had since I had kids 13 years ago. (Related: She's not my only younger friend; it's a lot easier to find time to hang with women who don't have kids.) I don't remember how the errand hanging started but once it did, we commented how much we both liked it. It reminds me of running errands with my mom and sister when i was little; this always made me feel happy. Sometimes my friend and I wouldn't actually run errands, we'd just hang out at my house and manage our calendars and write emails and stuff. I've seen her really briefly since pandemic began. She works now at a coffee stand near a hospital and doesn't want to take a risk on passing the virus to us.
I agree that peak Errand Friend is usually college, because in our post-college, family-with-kids life, my spouse and I lament the difficulties of making Errand Friends, even pre-COVID. The closest analog to Errand Friend that I have right now is the Texting Friend.
This is a new concept to me. Yes, I would meander across campus with someone in college just to spend time together, but nothing in my adult life has parallelled that. I've often found myself longing for a lot of the supports that college life provided, more and more so as the years go by.
Thanks for this share! Lovely encapsulation of an essential truth: the more we are scheduled the less we achieve.
Obviously a degree of coordination with time bound obligations is necessary, but the spontaneity of intersecting life trajectories must be observed and valued.
I’m not sure I ever had Errand Friends, but I do have knitting friends, meaning you get together and do something you’d normally do by yourself and generally talk about anything but that.
Ohhh, THIS comment totally crystallises things for me! Now I get it!
I read through this piece, and other than a few moments of recognition about doing relaxing puttering tasks together (helping write thank you notes, etc.), I was intrigued that I just didn't connect to any of the enjoyable, relaxed ideas of an Errand Friend. My experience of friends wanting to run errands has always felt much more dull, like "oh I know we're on our way to the museum, but do you mind if I just pop in here to return this thing I bought?" and then I'm standing idly in a shop doorway for half an hour. The key difference for a happy Errand Friend experience seems to be in the autonomy, "you just join someone on their life trajectory for awhile", vs. feeling roped in to tagging along on someone else's chores.
reading about errand friends made me miss friendships tremendously. i miss the casual encounters of sharing space with someone doing absolutely nothing TOGETHER.
I am my daughter’s errand friend. She has a lot going on and I enjoy driving while she does all of her stuff. She and her family have been with us for 3 months. It’s great in so many ways.
I went to college in NYC so my perspective on friendship there is a bit different. Our favorite activity during the day (this was the 1970s) was sitting in a coffee shop ordering successive cheap food and just yakking. Or we walked up Madison Ave on our way to the Met, looking in windows, back when it wasn't all chain and designer stores. In late middle age I have a lot of friends, but even pre-Covid most of them live elsewhere, and the ones nearby have a predilection for "doing" and "activities" and not hanging out. I've welcomed Covid as meaning, well, we can't do that, we have to sit on the front porch with blankets piled up and just talk.
My oldest friend from childhood and I were apart for 20+ years and then in our 40s she rather miraculously and accidentally wound up moving to the same town where I live now. We would sit and talk for hours in my living room or hers, and it was such a gift to be with someone who knew me (and her) in such depth. She had to move again to take care of her very elderly mother, and do I ever miss that idle hanging out, talking about what we were reading, watching, cooking, thinking, wishing, hoping, listening to, wearing, people around us, etc. etc.
Oh I'm so sad she's left — hopefully will return soon!
Not sure that will happen, but we are still emailing and when we can travel, visiting! The great thing about a longstanding friendship like this is you just pick up where you left off.
I love this so much. I met my best friend in grad school and we spent so much time browsing the sale racks at Anthropologie that 1) we learned when they moved new stuff to sale and 2) when she moved away the staff asked me about her. The second most recent time I saw her, I flew to Toronto for one day and sat around while she packed for another international move and shopped for a present for a birthday party her daughter was attending and picked up the kids from school. The 6am and 8pm flights were absolutely worth it.
Also she has a subscription to this newsletter because while we don’t always observe official gifting occasions, we do also do occasional spontaneous “this is exactly the right thing” gifts.
YAY, PERFECT
My best friend is also an errand friend, but she's not a dude. My male friends I only see for intentional reasons; beer drinking around the firepit, for example, or band practice.
Errand destinations have included: Ace Hardware, Costco, Lowe's, Murdock's, Target, Michael's, Good Will, various other thrift shops, Albertson's, The Good Food Store, Eye Doctor, Bob Wards. The dump. Oh, and the liquor store, duh.
An errand friend loves to go to the dump
Started to tear up because I realized I’m the Errand Friend and I haven’t been able to share that intimacy with anyone for years!
Same. My one remaining errand friend died this summer, and the ones before her moved away. The rest of my friends grew out of it as we aged and got busier, but I'm single and chronically ill and always available and it still suits my life and I miss it terribly.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope one day we find people to share this connection with again. <3
I love this and I love and miss my Errand Friends. Re: the point about men, my partner's favorite activity to occupy his pandemic time is just calling any and all of his friends to shoot the shit for hours at a time. He'll go through a half-dozen contacts till SOMEONE answers and the conversations are just often a lot of "What have you been up to?" "What are you doing right now?" but it approximates normality, I guess. (I'm a noted hater of phone calls.) Lately this has included talking to his best friend on the phone through the duration of a football game they are both separately watching.
A key aspect of my Errand Friendships is that my friends had cars and I did not and it was largely their errands that we were running, but it meant that they'd just pick me up while they were out and about and I'd just stay with them until we got close to my apartment again or one of us had something else that needed to be done.
After ten years without a car, I now have one, and I am low key worried that my friends will stop calling me to say they’re in the neighborhood and want to know if I want to go to the grocery store or help them organize their waffle collection.
I have a lot of questions about this waffle collection! But mostly I just want to wish you the continued presence of Errand Friends in the future~
After all of this is over, I mean.
The richest and most vibrant parts of life seem to come when we are just kind of existing. Doing nothing much, going nowhere fast, devoid of a real mission (running to some shop to see what kind of Filson shirt you're not going to buy isn't really an objective, although it may be a hobby). It's the time that is devalued (not working, not completing something) that has the most worth.
I read this with great interest--I didn't know it was a thing other people enjoyed! I've never read anything about it before, or discussed it much with others. I am 43 (SAHP to 2) and four years ago befriended a woman 15 years younger when we worked retail together. She's the only errand friend I've had since I had kids 13 years ago. (Related: She's not my only younger friend; it's a lot easier to find time to hang with women who don't have kids.) I don't remember how the errand hanging started but once it did, we commented how much we both liked it. It reminds me of running errands with my mom and sister when i was little; this always made me feel happy. Sometimes my friend and I wouldn't actually run errands, we'd just hang out at my house and manage our calendars and write emails and stuff. I've seen her really briefly since pandemic began. She works now at a coffee stand near a hospital and doesn't want to take a risk on passing the virus to us.
I agree that peak Errand Friend is usually college, because in our post-college, family-with-kids life, my spouse and I lament the difficulties of making Errand Friends, even pre-COVID. The closest analog to Errand Friend that I have right now is the Texting Friend.
This is a new concept to me. Yes, I would meander across campus with someone in college just to spend time together, but nothing in my adult life has parallelled that. I've often found myself longing for a lot of the supports that college life provided, more and more so as the years go by.
One of the hardest things about living in NY is that I never made errand friends either!
Thanks for this share! Lovely encapsulation of an essential truth: the more we are scheduled the less we achieve.
Obviously a degree of coordination with time bound obligations is necessary, but the spontaneity of intersecting life trajectories must be observed and valued.
Peace
Kind of weird coincidence that I had just read about Japan's Nothing Man via another newsletter and then coming across your errand friend thoughts.. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-man-rent-followers-b1787128.html
I’m not sure I ever had Errand Friends, but I do have knitting friends, meaning you get together and do something you’d normally do by yourself and generally talk about anything but that.
Ohhh, THIS comment totally crystallises things for me! Now I get it!
I read through this piece, and other than a few moments of recognition about doing relaxing puttering tasks together (helping write thank you notes, etc.), I was intrigued that I just didn't connect to any of the enjoyable, relaxed ideas of an Errand Friend. My experience of friends wanting to run errands has always felt much more dull, like "oh I know we're on our way to the museum, but do you mind if I just pop in here to return this thing I bought?" and then I'm standing idly in a shop doorway for half an hour. The key difference for a happy Errand Friend experience seems to be in the autonomy, "you just join someone on their life trajectory for awhile", vs. feeling roped in to tagging along on someone else's chores.
This line is so good
“the best Errand Friendship time feels as restorative as time alone.”
i am here for peggy and steve content!
reading about errand friends made me miss friendships tremendously. i miss the casual encounters of sharing space with someone doing absolutely nothing TOGETHER.
I am my daughter’s errand friend. She has a lot going on and I enjoy driving while she does all of her stuff. She and her family have been with us for 3 months. It’s great in so many ways.
I love this very much