I love the story of the singles’ cooking club that has lasted 39 years and counting. That’s the one that was told by the distinguished historian Mary Beth Norton, that I posted on Living Single here, here, and here. I like the idea of a group of singles coming together, fairly routinely, in a social gathering that feels familiar and comfortable and is not about coupling. I was in a cooking club for 10 years when I lived in Charlottesville, but for most of those years, I was the only single person in groups that typically included three or four couples.
Also during my East Coast years, I’ve had times when several singles gathered most Sunday evenings. I never thought of those events as specifically singles’ gatherings, but now that I think about them, that’s what they were. We were all single. We would watch an hour of bad TV (for a while, it was The Practice), and share food and drinks and stories and support. The food was rarely a full dinner – snacks were fine. Now, no two of us are in the same place, and I haven’t recreated anything like it out here in California.
What about you? Do you have any semi-regular gatherings with other singles? How about rituals that aren’t just with other singles?
