The Buddy System

How two old friends are helping each other get things done.

I think of myself as a loner. A rebel.

I have a Pee Wee Herman soul trapped in a Francis Buxton body.

Not a rebel so much as a loner.

When I was a kid I had a few close friends at school or church, but none in my neighborhood. I grew up in a small and virtually childless community in south central Euless, Texas with the lofty name of Park Crestmoor—far too lofty for its staunchly working and lower middle class environs. It is comprised of mid-century starter homes that would not look out of place on The Wonder Years. When I was a child in the seventies and eighties it was populated with younger couples who did not yet have kids and retirees who bought their houses new. Separated from the rest of Euless by a freeway and two four lane highways, it was a neighborhood whose only attractions were a veterinarian office, a dry cleaners, a trash-strewn wooded lot, and a coin-operated car wash next to an open lot just chock full of sandburs aka “stickers,” the enemy of all creatures great and small.

These bastards. My feet, hands, and knees can feel this picture.

My best friends as a little kid were Mr. and Mrs. Green, the friendly retirees that lived next door. I hope that I was not Dennis the Menace to them, but they always seemed to enjoy my company. And I enjoyed theirs.

A bit of trivia: the first funeral I ever attended was Mr. Green’s. Many years later I refused to attend Mrs. Green’s funeral, because I was going through a phase where I thought funerals were stupid and would avoid going to them if at all possible. I’m still in that phase, by the way. If it were up to me, my motto would be the words of Leigh Bardugo: “No mourners, no funerals.” Damn you, social mores and filial bonds, or I would have skipped every other funeral since—even the one where I delivered the family’s eulogy.

I cannot more highly suggest the book, “Six of Crows”, by Leigh Bardugo where the phrase comes from.

For a few years I had a foster sister that was the same age and we were quite close, but we didn’t really play with any neighborhood kids. For most of my childhood there were exactly two other kids in my age group on my street—Brian and Donna. They were very nice kids. They married each other. I’m sure that they remain very nice people.

They took this commandment literally.

It’s not that I didn’t have friends. I did, but they all lived in neighborhoods that were really hard to get to on foot from where I lived. There were no sidewalks, so riding my bike was out. I was forbidden from riding in the street, lest I get annihilated by one of the asshole cops that regularly blasted down Ridgecrest Drive; which they used as a high speed shortcut to and from the police station a few blocks over. Fuck the police.

Except for this good buddy.

As a loner, I always wanted to be self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency was something that I was assured would be taught to me by the Boy Scouts, but all I ever learned in the scouts was how to tell mama jokes. That and how to receive a severe beating with a hammer by a future multiple murderer.

True story.

The Boy Scouts taught me that I could be beaten with my own hammer by a visibly disturbed young man for absolutely no reason, and that the adults I went to for help were basically useless.

Surprisingly, I quit the Boy Scouts after that incident.

Screw ‘em, bunch of America First homophobes.

So much for self-sufficiency.

It really is, guys. We’re interconnected monkeys, even the introverts.

Nowadays, I have friends. Friends back in Texas, friends right here in Chicago, and all around the world. And like everyone else, I miss them. Dearly. I never thought I was much of a hugger, until going three months without hugging anyone besides Jennifer. I’m a hugger.

A chatty introvert and a hugger.

In the time of quarantine I have been (socially distanced) in the physical presence of four friends. One of whom is my dear friend from back home, Tiffany. Tiffany and I were friends in high school that lost touch in the 90s and early 2000s, only to be reunited by Facebook. We have gotten very close since we first reconnected on that fascist hellsite back in its early days. She’s funny and smart, a talented writer, and one of the kindest people I know. Truly.

We have always chatted in Messenger a fair bit, and always comment on each other’s posts etc., and I would on a very rare occasion see her in Texas. But the fates are strange, and Tiffany is now in a relationship with a man who lives just over a mile from me. The very last brunch that Jennifer and I went to before the virus was with Tiffany and her boyfriend, Brian.

Since Coronavirus we have become even closer. We chat or talk on the phone several times a week. In this talking, we realized that both of us were having a seriously hard time getting much done under quarantine. Getting anything done really, and so we decided to start an accountability buddy system. Almost every day we make a to-do list that we send to the other. We used to type them up, but now we generally take pictures of our handwritten lists.

Yes, I schedule my shower. Activities of Daily Living, y’all!

There’s no set time that we send them, but we generally do so before 9 am. Throughout the day we might check in with each other to give a status update. Or to beg for a gentle prod to quit doomscrolling social media and to get to work! Tiffany is great at that. She is the mother of four grown kids. She’s had practice. I am not a disciplinarian. I’m a born enabler. I am the friend you call when you need help rationalizing poor life decisions. But I am pretty handy with the “You got this!” or “You can do it!" when Tiffany needs a boost. Please don’t let me mischaracterize Tiffany as a taskmaster—she’s far from it. She adopts a positive reinforcement style—except when I need her to snap me out of a Facebook or Twitter doomscrolling spiral.

I may not be absolutely crushing it lately, but I am doing so much better because of this little bit of accountability. I don’t want to disappoint Tiffany and she doesn’t want to disappoint me. And it works. It works better than the days of doomscrolling, mindless grazing, dread staring, and fitful naps that our days were in the early days of quarantine. I just thought that y’all should know that one of the only reasons that I am posting with any regularity or working my challenges at all is this daily to-do list exchange. That and the connection to my good friend.

Thank you, Tiffany!

Update on my hands:

They are feeling much better.

I should have taken all of the social media apps off of my phone ages ago. It’s a huge relief. I start playing guitar again on Monday—woohoo! I just got my my Kitchen Safe to put my phone into this weekend while Jennifer and I shame clean the apartment before the maintenance man comes to fix the many little repairs and couple of biggish repairs that have accumulated since lockdown began. We probably have four to five hours of cleaning to do between us, but even with our phones locked away, we still have our raging ADHD (even on our focus-meds) to contend with, so we’ll probably be done sometime next month. Just kidding. We’ll get it done. Wish us luck.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

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