I want you to show me

There is a scene in Runaway Bride where Julia Roberts tastes eggs in a variety of preparations. The goal is to help her determine what she likes, having long adopted her boyfriends’ preferences. Fully taking on someone else’s likes, dislikes, or entire personality is… not great — however, I will stand behind trying on someone else's interests for a few hours. To borrow from another rom-com: I’ll have what she’s having (today, at least).

There’s plenty to be said about finding your own “thing” — and I’ll write about hobbies another time — but we don’t talk nearly enough about taking a quick detour into what’s greasing someone else’s gears. You’re into canning your own vegetables? Let me come over and help! You’re getting into house music? Let’s go to a show together! Let me get involved for an afternoon; let me inhale a little second-hand excitement.

Show-and-tell — much like youth, cool T-shirts, and birthday parties — is wasted on the young: Kids probably aren’t paying attention to what others are saying or showing; they’re just waiting for their own turn. I remember an after-Christmas show-and-tell in kindergarten where we were to dazzle our classmates with our favorite gift that year. I’d forgotten this assignment (shocking!), but happened to be wearing my new Chuck Taylor All Stars. I hopped up on a chair and proudly gestured at my feet to showcase The Gift of Style. I do not remember what anyone else brought in that day.

But now, as adults, I think we could all benefit from seeing and experiencing what our friends are excited about. When so many people are all-consumed with their personal brand, you can kill your algorithm for a day, step outside of your carefully curated life, and check out what someone else’s fuss is all about.

It is such a gas to tag along, and folks have learned how nice it is to team up for low-stakes errands — with research confirming as much: Scientists “found that participants consistently rated every common daily activity as more enjoyable when interacting with someone else.” So it would make sense, to me, that participating in someone's little hobby or joining them at their favorite secret park only ups the ante. You get to ride the coattails of someone else’s joy — which, by the way, you probably just doubled. By showing that you care about their thing, you’ve nudged them toward the front of the class and made them feel a little extra special. Get up on the chair! Show us your cool thing!

Although the book How to Win Friends & Influence People ushered in a weird self-help era, author Dale Carnegie did give us a quote that I love: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” Letting someone show you their favorite thing? It’s like being a good listener with your entire being. You can ask how someone’s dance classes are going, or you can see if they’ll teach you a few cha-cha slides. (Someone please teach me how to do the percolator!!!)

This past Sunday, my friend Lacy invited people over to make fire cider. She had all the ingredients laid out on a picnic table, measurements written out, and a big pot of tea brewed. We only had to bring a big glass jar and get to mixing. Lacy explained the benefits of each part of the concoction (it’s called an oxymel! I’m learning!) and all the ways you can incorporate it in drinks, food, and so forth. She came armed with information from books and herbal classes, acting as our own little potion master.

“All of my relationships live, at least in part, in my phone, where they are forced to share space with everything else that happens there,” Julie Beck recently wrote in The Atlantic. “Lately, the feeling creeping up on me is that the pieces of my relationships that exist on that screen seem less and less distinguishable from all the other content I consume there.”

Could I Google the recipe for fire cider myself? Absolutely. Could I watch a YouTube tutorial of a Mother Earth type talking me through the process? Of course! But when we let our friends show us what they know, you get a whole lot more — and it completely removes the experience from our largely online lives. Lacy took our questions, she offered stories from her own experience, she had some zingers, and we made s’mores. (Are s’mores witch doctor-approved? It’s unclear.)

If there are two things that we could use less of today, it’s choice overload and an obsession with self-sufficiency — both of which flourish online. Instead, I’m going to join what you already planned to do, and you’re going to show me how to do it. This is how I learned I don’t mind camping (two nights is the sweet spot), that I enjoy F1 races (Dave, myself, and our friends have a little watch-party group we call The Chicanes), and that flea markets are an excellent way to spend a day (they’re not just for old people!).

As I was leaving Lacy’s, I mentioned taking a walk around a few neighborhoods to check out Halloween decorations this week. Abbie asked if she could join, and YES. Everyone is invited: Please fill a Thermos with your personalized hot toddy and feed off of my love for skeletons set up in goofy-ass tableaus. I might even strap a bluetooth speaker to the dog and play John Carpenter’s greatest hits. Tag along, I’m doing it either way!