4. Other People

In the end, it’s all about other people. Isn’t it?

I am talking about the other people in our lives -- Edmond Burke’s “little platoons” -- the groups of friends who accompany us for a stretch as we walk down life’s roadway. Burke was writing about friends within the aristocratic classes, which befits his eighteenth century perspective, but in contemporary America things are more complicated and interesting. Our “little platoons” are composed of comrades who share one or two of our many identities: Friends who live on our street. Marcia and her tennis friends or University of Michigan faculty friends; me and my retired pathologist friends, or my family.

This fourth letter about our California experience focuses on our quest to find friends here in the Bay Area, perhaps the ultimate test of whether our three month sojourn will work out in any fundamental, meaningful way. 

It didn’t begin particularly well.

Clara told Paul that the best way to meet contemporaries was to hang around in the hot tub at her swim club. So he did. Sure enough, several people Paul’s age joined him, and the conversation turned to COVID (which seems to be all anyone talks about these days; whatever happened to discussing the weather?) Anyway, Paul was entertaining the group with stories about his air quality measurements on the plane trip out to California, pedantically explaining the difference between droplets and aerosols. He answered questions with professorial assurance. Finally, he stopped talking for a moment to ask the woman sitting next to him what she did, and she turned out to be a professor of atmospheric chemistry at UC Berkeley. Charitably, she added that Paul got his facts mostly right. 

Oops. 

Chalk up one friendship that isn’t going to happen. Even recounting the story to you now -- six days later -- is sufficiently embarrassing that I had to put the previous paragraph in the third person, to distance myself from that sad, insufferable Paul who overplayed his hand. Why is it that men confuse making points with making friends? What was Paul thinking? And why is he back in the third person?

After that, things got better. There was nowhere else for them to go. I joined the Cal Sailing Club. Marcia is attempting to infiltrate the local tennis club. And the two of us have been speed dating as a couple with Californian contemporaries who Clara has thrown in our direction. We had five get togethers in the past five days -- the sociologist with a kind heart who lives across the street; the fintech entrepreneur and his wife who cashed in, retired early, and know all the good local hikes; a membrane protein researcher and preschool teacher who are moving from Atlanta to the Bay Area to be near two of their children; a retired Isreali transportation architect and New York family lawyer who designed train stations and disentangled couples (I will let you figure out who did what); and a psychiatrist and physicist who spend winters in Berkeley to be near their son. Oh wait, that one is tomorrow -- we haven’t met them yet. What do you get when you cross a psychiatrist with a physicist? We will know in less than 24 hours. 

I am creating a spreadsheet to keep track of everyone we have met, are going to meet, facts to remember, and promises we made to meet again. When I was young, I could remember all this. Now, not so much. Isn’t there an app to assist people like us? There are dozens of dating sites. Can’t someone build a tool to help folks our age find friends and keep track of what we have learned from whom? 

But enough, already. Next week, Marcia has agreed to make a guest appearance and write our fifth installment, while I try to pass my skipper’s test. You stay turned, while I stay afloat. 

Paul