Friendships: From the Well to the Drive-In to Facebook

I recently spent time visiting my family in Michigan.  I cannot go back to Detroit this time of year without getting a little melancholy.  I have a lot of memories from growing up in Motown in the sixties.  Many of those recollections surround summers when I was a teenager, especially those years after my friends and I had the freedom of being able to drive.  Our favorite hangout was a drive-in called Dunkin’ Burger.  If you have seen the movie American Graffiti you get the picture.  Dunkin’ Burger or the local Big Boy was our Mel’s Drive-In.  The atmosphere was always festive in the summer, especially on weekends.  The local drive-ins always featured hot cars and cute girls.  Someone always had a radio playing loud through the speakers in their car.  WXYZ was the station of choice.  The local drive-in was a place to see old friends and make new ones. 

Another gathering place was our front porch.  On week nights my friends from the neighborhood would stop by for conversation, a cold soda and some of my mom’s chocolate chip cookies.  Usually the baseball game played somewhere in the background.  Again the sense of community was what brought us together.  People have always looked for a central spot that could serve as a place where community could be nurtured.  In Jesus’ day, I sense it was the town well.  Everyone needed water, and with it came some friendly conversation.  Like the 60’s drive-in, you could hear the latest gossip and always find a listening ear. 

Today, social media and texting has replaced the town well and the local drive-in as the favorite gathering spot for teens.  It is easy to find fault with what we might see as “virtual friendship.”  How can you have a conversation with someone without eye contact?  The reality is that the needs are the same.  According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the need for community comes right behind the basic need for air, food, water and security.  Times change and so has the way we meet that basic need for companionship.

Yes, I also recall some of those discussions with my parents.  Somehow, they could not understand the reason I needed the car to hang out at a hamburger joint.  Or why when I got home from a night of “cruising” my response to their question of what I had been doing was, “nothing.”   Today’s teens and young adults should never have to explain why they spend so much time texting and checking social media; they are just doing what comes naturally.