DALLAS --Amid the anarchy so prevalent in his 1996 debut novel, Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk introduced to a national audience a term not so widely used today: single-serving friend.
The idea of single-serving friends -meeting an individual during the course of travel, sustaining a relationship for a few hours and then parting, never to speak again -is simple enough. The philosophy of the practice is much more difficult to fully comprehend.
On my return flight Sunday from New Orleans to Dallas, I sat next to my own single-serving friends, Pie and Willie Barbier, a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. During our two hours together we talked about our travels and war and the importance of sustained marriages to the nation.
While Willie, 72, offered me sugarless trail mix and sugarless powdered walnuts and sugarless chocolate, Pie, 75, just looked out the window, staring at clouds and sky; Pie, who served in the Air Force during his younger days, is a diabetic.
As we flew over northern Louisiana, Willie began talking about family, particularly her four grown children. For a variety of reasons, she and Pie had never been blessed with any grandchildren. It was then that I felt a strong tie to this couple.
Before her death last November, my grandmother played a significant role in my rearing. Now, seven months after the fact, I had found surrogate grandparents, if only for a few hours, and Pie and Willie had a surrogate grandson, whom they spoiled without ceasing before our arrival at Dallas-Fort Worth International. When they boarded an airport cart to another gate and another flight, I couldn't leave them. I walked behind that cart as long as I could.
During my connecting flight to Port Columbus, I reflected on my weekend in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and found it funny that what I would remember most was my time with Pie and Willie. After all, I had eaten jambalaya and crawfish, spent nearly two days in the sun at one of the nation's largest track and field meets and walked along Bourbon Street during its height of weekend revelry.
But these were material experiences, while my time with the Barbiers was, well, something more. This is where the philosophy of single-serving friends comes into play, where its discussion and lasting effects are difficult to discuss. My conversation with Pie and Willie is something I won't soon forget. For two hours, they were my grandparents, and I was their grandson, but our relationship was never real.
The practice of collecting and discarding single-serving friends is fun, even exciting, but there is something morally wrong about pouring out all these petty details of our lives to another person without consequence. It's harmless and it shouldn't be.
Relationships --real relationships --should not be filled with idle chatter or some shooting of the breeze. They should not serve as a sort of one-morning stand with the person in seat 14F.
When I entered a search for Barbier on http://www.yahoo.com, more than 200 results appeared on the screen. A search for Pie Barbier however, merited nothing. I should have asked for an address or a phone number, anything. Pie and Willie were more than single-serving friends, but that's all they'll ever be because of my negligence.
And I thought I was so clever.
--Matt is a sophomore journalism major who heretofore resolves to be more observant. Send him an e-mail at matthew.lawell@ohiou.edu.
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Matt LaWell
