Thanks to multiple delayed flights and a gross shortage of cabs, I didn't get home from Aspen until about 6:30 this morning. Apparently, I was so tired that I left my keys in my front door, because I found them this morning when I finally woke up.
I just got a call from my landlord. When he asked me if I was still alive, I developed a sudden and irrational fear that something had gone wrong with my rent check--but no, my upstairs neighbor had noticed, and called him to make sure I was all right.
It's a small thing, but maybe because I grew up in New York, I find it heartwarming. DC has a high crime rate, but many other amenities.
Having grown up in suburban flyover-land myself, I tend to miss casual, if superficial, neighborliness. I'm always pleased to find bits of it in the big bad city (even if it often comes from other transplants).
However, I've also noticed that, in large impersonal cities, people will sometimes take more active steps to support and protect each other that you'd generally expect in the hinterlands. One friend, having lived for years in both the hospitable south and NYC, noted that, in her experience in the south, if the bottom falls out of your bag of groceries while you're walking along, a passer-by will invariably stop and sympathize. In NYC, no one sympathizes, but a passer-by will often stop, stoop down and help you collect your groceries. (They won't make eye contact or acknowledge your existence while they do it, but they will actually try to help.) That is reasonably consistent with my experience, as well.
Maybe someone will even stop to help you locate seitan in DC.
Your post is the laziest piece of writing I've seen in a long time.
It's a blog asshole.
Jesus H. Christ.
That is nice. Glad you're back. rickm is a buttmunch. Can I saw that on here?
How did that clever phrase go? Good neighbors make good fences, or somethinnerother...
"I just got a call from my landlord. When he asked me if I was still alive, I developed a sudden and irrational fear that something had gone wrong with my rent check--but no, my upstairs neighbor had noticed, and called him to make sure I was all right."
Maybe they were planning on divvying up your stuff if you didn't answer.
Even if I didn't enjoy your writing a lot (and I do), I'd feel obliged to say, don't do that again, you complete dumbass.