Howdy, Neighbor

My neighbor just broke up with his girlfriend.  I don't know this because he told me.  In fact, I've never met my neighbor.  I don't even know his name, and I'm not entirely sure I would recognize him if I saw him outside the building.  The closest I have ever come to speaking with my neighbor is joining in on singing Taylor Swift when I hear him blasting it through the walls and once shouting over a "Sorry!" after belting out the theme song to DuckTales perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.  You see, like many New York apartments, our walls are thin.  And so I know my neighbor's sports preferences by which games he holds parties for (football -- apparently best watched with lots of beer-guzzling guys' guys), his wake-and-sleep schedule by the music I hear (gotta start the day with 106.7 and end it with some classic rock), and his relationship status... by the fact that he is currently blasting sad 80s love ballads, where a requirement seems to be that the song must contain the word "love" about 50 times.... A particular favorite seems to be "Baby Come Back" (otherwise known as that song the discarded mop sings in the Swiffer ad).  I really feel like I ought to take over some chicken noodle soup or something.  "Hi, we've never met even though we've lived next door to each other for 3 years, but you sound sad and like you're probably stuck on your couch in your pajamas, so here's some chicken noodle soup and a board game to cheer you up."  No?  That would probably be awkward, huh?

Where I'm from in Indiana, when you walk past someone on the street, especially your neighbor, you say hello; where my mom's from in Detroit, when you see your neighbor you pretend you don't notice the black limos coming and going from their driveway or what they mean; in the small town in Canada where my Grandpa moved to from England, when you pass someone on the street, you get to talking and before you know it that was-a-stranger-10-minutes-ago has offered to come by your cottage and fix your porch, and the bank teller has invited you to tea.  In New York... well, you live next door to people for years without ever talking to them.  I frequently get in the elevator and someone who also lives on my floor and has already pushed the button for it asks what floor I want because neither of us recognizes the other, even though my floor is a single short hallway.  And I don't think the reluctance of tenants in my building to befriend each other is simply because my building seems to have its unfair share of the victims and perpetrators of high-profile crimes in the city (not that it helped my neighborliness when the subway killer turned out to be someone I'd ridden in the elevator with many times...).  As I think most people who have spent any time in New York City can attest, there often seems to be a disconnect between New Yorkers and the people around them.  It's what enables us to shove others to the side as we race to make our train, thinking nothing of whether our rushing elbows are preventing others from making the same train; it's what makes us plow through determinedly in the battle of the umbrellas on rainy days in the over-crowded streets of midtown, focused solely on our own progress through the sea of canopied dangerous spokes; it's what makes us so often treat others as faceless player-pieces to maneuver around in our living-in-the-big-city video game.

But when I hear a big, burly, football-loving, usually constantly laughing, beer-guzzling guy reduced to playing Celine Dion's "All By Myself" at max volume... it sure would be nice if we had some of that Indiana or Canadian neighborly friendliness.  I guess I'll just settle for blasting back some music to cheer him up.  Since he doesn't seem to mind the girl power pop.... perhaps some of Katy Perry's "Part Of Me"?