My neighbor really is Bob

I was just pulling that name out of the air yesterday in the last blog but I walk down the street this morning and all of a sudden this guy raking leaves is hailing me up and introducing himself as Bob. That's uncanny! Who knew!

Anyway the neighborhood seems quite friendly in a weird Mr Rogers type of way. Actually its rather disturbing to a city boy like me. Naa its not that disturbing because I grew up in Barbados where like Cheers everyone knew your name .... and ya business too actually. But living in Downtown Toronto, the past however long its been, I've just become accustomed to folk moving super fast or staring at you without saying hi or acknowledging your good mornings. I mean I lived in the last apartment for 4 years and I barely knew a few folk in the building but I wasn't that close that I would even tell them I was moving.

I mean yea I still remember the woman across the lobby trying to jack a couple of my boxes when I was moving in and the crazy guy who assumed that every black person in the building was looking for me (and no that's not what made him crazy, he was crazy because he thought people were breaking into his apartment every week and moving his furniture) and all the countless old ladies who gripped their purses tighter in the elevator with me.

Actually I think folk in the building got along better with my wife a non-threatening black woman than with me because they probably thought I was going to go Biggie on them like "I've been robbing ....... Since the slave ships , with the same clips and the same four fives." It was actually rather funny no scratch that highly annoying to have folk try to lock me out of the building or not hold elevators for me because they thought I didn't belong there or they were somehow afraid of me. Glad that craps over with.

But back to the topic at hand. It is rather scary to go from one extreme of unfriendliness to almost the other extreme. Actually its not even the other extreme its more like going from totally unfriendly to normal. Man its creepy. I'm sleeping with one eye open because its disturbing. Mind you its still all good because one of our next door neighbors has been described to us as "rather quiet." Now since the street in itself is quiet I can only assume that this is suburb lingo for unmannerly and they are probably the only folk who haven't come by to introduce themselves since we moved in. We've seen them and said hi and they have barely acknowledged us. But who cares they make me less paranoid about the friendliness and besides they can get the finger....The middle.

Anyway I'm going to go chat to Bob about those Leaf games and what's the latest at Home Depot. ...NOT!