The Regular

Now it's time to get cracking on this book idea, the one about proxemics or, in layman's terms: personal space. I am going to spend the next couple of days sketching out some ideas for possible essays/sections; any and all feedback appreciated.

While he is not regular, in the sense of a "regular Joe," my father is the ultimate Regular, a familiar face just about everywhere he goes. To be "a regular" is a choice, borne of personality. If you frequent the same places often enough, after a while you become a regular--recognized, acknowledged, appreciated by the employees of the place in question as well as by the other regulars.

One way to become a regular is to avoid doing anything or going anywhere new. If you refuse to try anyplace else to get your coffee, the coffee shop you buy it at becomes your regular joint. You, by default, become a regular. Another way to become a regular is to deliberately set out to make a place your own. You go back again and again, forge relationships, make yourself if not indispensible then a part of the woodwork. My father does both, and he has passed these habits--this knack of becoming a regular--on to me.

From very early on, I observed that my father knew somebody every place we went. It was my mother who had grown up in my hometown, and she knew people sometimes because she had gone to school with them, or worked at the soda fountain with them, but it was my dad who had cased out the town, decided what his haunts were, and made himself a suburban version of the regular: a local.

For example, if you went to the town bakery with my dad, it was Mary Marrone who waited on you. She knew how my dad took his coffee; she knew which chocolate chip cookies I preferred. If you went with my dad to the Boston Garden to see a Celtics game, you walked slightly out of your way to buy your hot dog at a certain stand because that's where "our guy" was; if there had been ten people in line in front of you and an empty booth next door, you would have waited. This is what regulars do.

I observed, watching my dad, that regulars often were the beneficiaries of special treatment. If you were a regular at the post office, you got your mail first, fastest. If you were a regular at the drug store, they held a copy of your paper behind the counter, even if someone else asked for one before you came in to pick it up. I liked the favors being a regular conferred.

Although I am less extroverted than my dad--hardcore regulars are generally outgoing--I am sufficiently so to have become a regular myself. This is one of the reasons I love New York so much: it is very easy here to make yourself a regular at any number of places in any number of ways. Although the city is large and populous, the neighborhoods are small and insular. When I approach the counter in the deli at the end of my street on a Saturday morning, the guy behind the counter does not say, "What would you like?" He says, "Coming right up."

To many people, this would be no great shakes. To me, the fact that a friendly man who is not actually my friend knows that I take my coffee with half-and-half, one sugar, makes me feel connected to the world.

More to come....