The other night, I had a hankering for my Mom’s Famous Stroganoff. With a skip in my step (as this had been the best idea I’d come up with all week), I headed out to the nearest grocery store (“Social Safeway” as my sister calls it, but we’ll get into that at a later time), to pick up some ingredients.
Arriving back at my apartment, I realized I forgot one minor ingredient: flour. Now you really only need like two tablespoons of flour to make stroganoff and it really isn’t a key ingredient, but it gives the sauce in my Mom’s Famous Stroganoff that special consistency, and being the Gourmet that I am, I could not let myself get away with a missing ingredient. So I ventured to my neighbor’s to borrow some flour.
But something peculiar happened; I hesitated. Being that this is a college apartment complex, I did not expect my punk-rocking neighbors to have flour as a staple ingredient in their cupboards (and I really doubt that they would give up their precious drugs disguised as flour as a practical joke) but I did not feel that knocking down a few doors, measuring cup in hand would be acceptable social behavior in this day and age. Finally, I ended up at my friend’s apartment (who is a frequent baker), and managed to scrounge up the two tablespoons needed for my culinary needs.
This got me wondering: In the past, neighbors have, for the most part, been dubbed as someone to turn to if you should need assistance. Even Dictionary.com defines “neighbor” as “a person who shows kindliness or helpfulness toward his or her fellow humans” (Dictionary.com, 2008). In this day and age, however, it is hard to come by a person who is friends with his or her neighbor. Rarely do we go over to another’s asking to borrow a cup of sugar, a cup of milk or any cup of anything for that matter.
Nevertheless, the past is the past, and some things don’t come back into style. But back in those days there must have existed some fine lines between what was deemed an “acceptable borrow request” and an “unacceptable borrow request”.
I would imagine that a cup of sugar borrowed at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, was an acceptable amount (I know because of the Outkast saying, “lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor” before I shake it like a polaroid picture). But what about a cup of cereal? Would a cup of cereal borrowed along with a cup of milk (because if you really were a well budgeted person, you would ration out your milk usage accordingly to your cereal consumption) at 7am on a Monday morning be an acceptable borrow request? Maybe and maybe not. Would two cups of sugar still be an “acceptable borrow request” given the same borrowing time frame of 3pm on a Sunday afternoon? Would 4 cups? 5 cups? What quantity starts to surpass the “acceptable borrow request” line, venturing into “unacceptable borrow request” territory?
Maybe the complicatedness of the situation is what drove this piece of social etiquette out of style. We are a society run on convenience and if an affair is not to our liking or advantage, we are very likely not to participate.
But when, exactly, did this custom go out of style? The rush of panic and hesitation I felt must have sparked my social sense and be indicative of some sort of social norm violation. But had I knocked ten years ago, would things have been different?
Only survivors of this great American custom would know for sure.