Hello, Neighbor

The other day, I was mindlessly staring out my bedroom window when something caught my eye: my neighbor in the building across the street, just standing at her window, waving at me. It was a strange moment. Such kindly gestures are rare in New York, and we'd never before exchanged even a nod of recognition. Besides that, she was waving somewhat awkwardly, using the full swing of her entire arm--like a kid who doesn't quite have the whole fine-tuned motor skills thing down just yet.

But hey, I'm a nice guy, so I just smiled as big as I could and started waving back, in the same slightly weird, full-armed manner. And I did so for a good four or five seconds before she even seemed to acknowledge my reply, at which point she stopped waving altogether, bent down out of view, came back to the window, did something else with her other hand and then started waving again, this time much more vigorously.

The lesson to be learned here: there's a major difference between kindly neighborliness and a person cleaning the inside of their windows.