Mutual Dependence Bingo, Week 2
Full food communism and need calling to need
We’re two weeks into the Mutual Dependence Bingo Challenge! Remember, you can generate your own bingo board here to play along. At the end of the month, everyone who scored a bingo will get a secret pdf of the first chapter of The Dignity of Dependence. And I’ll do a drawing to send two of you an early copy of the whole book. (Full rules/announcement here).
Here’s my board so far:
As you can see, I used one of the allowed substitutions to replace something I didn’t think I was likely to do (“Take Care of a Pet”) with something that felt in the spirit of the bingo board: Full Food Communism.
Full Food Communism comes from a Megan McArdle column about the different ways to share food while dining out as a couple. You can have a variety of trade agreements or…
Full food communism. A communist economy is a terrible idea. A communist dinner table, on the other hand, truly is a bounteous paradise. This is the final flowering of the dining experience, when the barriers wither away and all ordering is centrally planned, with the fruits distributed equally. You will know that this happy moment has arrived when you start telling the waiter “Just put the plates anywhere; we share everything.”
Haha, reading this over, we didn’t quite hit her definition. We were four adults, six kids (plus one in utero… not mine) having barbecue to celebrate the Assumption. (Fridays are traditionally fasting days for Catholic, but a sufficiently high feast trumps the fast and makes it a Meat Friday).
We didn’t so much coordinate our orders as arrive staggered. Since all the kids are five and under, you must order some food immediately. Our family ordered, shared whatever we had, and then trusted the other family to fill gaps with a second order. It felt very friendly to let everyone just go for it, and to be surprised by what our friends chose to order (grilled pineapple!).
I liked hearing what all y’all took on last week. Tristyn has one kind of help blossom into others:
Kevin had a fun one this week: asking a friend of ours to come over to help install the new roof he built for the chicken run! Said friend's wife is pregnant (and welcoming reading recommendations), so I took the opportunity to send him home with a large tote bag full of pregnancy, baby, and childrearing books. We also had a kid's clothing swap at church this week, which I did not organize, but did participate in. I also let someone do part of my homeless ministry food prep for me (while at the clothing swap) because Tyche was refusing to nap and did not want anyone but me to hold her.
(Since I know Tristyn is an excellent chef, I’m sure letting someone else imperfectly prep was the hardest task)
Kelsey had a particularly lovely phone number exchange:
At our weekly church picnic, an older couple I hadn’t met before approached me because they recognized a piece of medical gear my baby was wearing. It turns out three of their kids were born with the same rare medical condition two of my kids have—one that thankfully doesn’t usually cause long-term problems for the child, but requires a lot of treatment during the first year or two! I asked for the mom’s phone number so we could connect again if I had questions about their experience and she was happy to give it to me.
A good reminder that when need is visible, it’s easier to connect!
And one friend sent me an illustration of her instinctual reaction to the challenge.
I managed to ask my across the street neighbor about taking our house key (now I just need to actually copy it!) and one of my friends will get back to me on Tuesday about a time for a regular call.
I know I’ll get a bingo tomorrow when I bring food to a friend as part of her new baby meal train. And I’m going to try to exchange numbers with a parent I don’t know at kindergarten orientation later this week.
Now, how about you?
We had evening plans and our sitter had a family emergency and needed to cancel. Instead of telling my husband to go without me (my first instinct), I texted my sister-in-law for help. She and her 7yo came over and had movie night at our house while we went out.
I picked up my daughter from preschool on Friday and let her hang out on the playground for an hour while some of her friends' parents came to pick their own kids up. Those that also lingered on the playground I awkwardly sidled up to and mentioned that my daughter has been wanting to have "my friends come my house" and exchanged numbers. We're now in the process of figuring out a good day for playdates with three separate classmates, having already lined up one with a fourth for this coming weekend.
"How do you coordinate all of that?" people ask. Google Calendar, a sprawling spreadsheet, apps script automations, and Remember the Milk for task management, in short. One tab of our giant spreadsheet gives me several handy lists of available meals I can copy-paste into WhatsApp, for instance. A Google form allows me to automatically process the decision to schedule a meal and set all the appropriate reminders for myself in Remember the Milk. And it's fairly straightforward to vibe-code any additional improvements I need using AI.
I know a longing for mutual dependence and deeper relationships can often be backwards-looking, nostalgically recalling or imagining a time when life was more communal. But it doesn't have to be! I personally want my kids to have a more connected life than I had growing up, and sometimes that involves using tools that my parents never could have.