forgetting to take pictures
Last Saturday, my friend S invited me out for drinks at a local bar we'd been to the same time last year. She was reminded by (I assume) her Photos app – you know how they show you pictures from a year ago? We'd taken a photo there by their wall, posing with a silly word, and endeavored to do the same thing when we went again.
We went to that same bar (in the daytime this time). There were almost no people so the staff said we could sit on the maybe more luxurious couches, but we chose our same tiny table by the wall anyway. We ordered three drinks (expensive, but good + cute) and a caesar salad (not as worth the price as the drinks) and hung out there for about three hours before leaving to wander the mall.
We dropped by the bookstore, where they were selling blind boxes and we spotted a Donald Duck 90th Anniversary one. I normally hate gacha-type things beyond a specific price range (and am not much of a merch collector to begin with), but I found myself thinking hard about this one. The triplets and Scrooge were two of the possible wins!!! I fell victim to the adrenaline rush that came with seeing your current brainworms out in the wild. S and I chewed over the decision to get it while browsing the books (and, as usual, making fun of some of them).
I was telling S earlier in the day that I wanted to find excuses to get our friend group together – hangouts that were fairly low stakes where attendance was not mandatory, but were purposeful enough that we'd make time for them. Some of us had gotten together to start playing a TTRPG called Oops, All Draculas and the success of it gave me this idea. S agreed and told me that she wanted to set up a "creative day" for us to sit and do our own things while hanging out, like drawing or crocheting. We also floated the idea of a book club, and discussed some logistics when we went for dinner.
(Dear reader, have you ever started a book club with some friends? I would love any advice or tips!)
After we said goodbye with promises to think more about our respective friend-group plans and I'd gotten into the car, feeling great, I realized I had nothing but my memories and the crochet Donnie that S made me to remember the hang by.1 We'd taken one picture by the wall but it was with her. Neither of us had used our phone very much over the six hours we spent together.
None of my friends nor I care much about getting pictures to post, so this has happened to me multiple times, although it varies per hang. Sometimes, we'll be enjoying so much we're compelled to document it to remember later, but most times, that same enjoyment will cause us to forget our phones altogether. This was the latter type. Sometimes I wish I took more photos, worrying that I'll want to look back in the future and remember what it was like, but there's something quite nice about not caring about the little brick I'm glued to so often, too focused on the simple delight of talking with a friend to care.
I did not buy the Donald Duck blind box. The Huey-Dewey-Louie on it were the 1938 designs, when Dewey was still orange. My Dew is blue!!!!!!!!!!↩