How Not To Put More Time In Your Life

I’m not apparently doing so well in my campaign against meeting any new neighbors, and time is running out. On October 7th Lainie will be gone (well, not gone, exactly. More like relocated four blocks away and until she gets a washer and dryer installed is planning to continue to bring her laundry by, and depending on whether she likes her new pool better than the pools here I’m sure I’ll see her throughout the summer, too, and there’s always something on HBO she can’t watch unless she’s at my place so no, on second thought she’s going nowhere but my point remains my point) and I need to be more adept at not meeting the new tenant than I was at not meeting her. Which might not be as difficult as I think, Lainie being the type of person who’s going to meet you whether you’re up for that or not simply because that’s the way she is.

Still, my resolve is there. I’ve honestly decided I don’t want to know any more people. It’s too tiring, it takes too much time out of my day (I wasn’t kidding about those nine hours), and it makes it very difficult to pass through the courtyard on any given evening without being stopped for conversation, even when I’m doing my best to ignore people, as I was last night. It had been one of those days where you’ve had enough email, phone calls, conversations, and politely requisite inanity to make you want nothing more than to not have to say another word or speak another greeting until the beginning of another new day (there’s a theory out there that this is something called Hospitality Fatigue, brought about by saying “Good morning”, “Good Evening” and “Good Afternoon” – hopefully not in that order, exactly – to countless strangers you pass in the course of your day. The condition is worsened by repeatedly exclaiming, “That would be my pleasure!” and “Absolutely!” when those are the last sentiments in the world you can imagine, but this person on the other end of your phone has just decided they must take a very important meeting with you on Sunday afternoon no less which means – when you should be in Levi’s and a baseball cap, you will once again be in a suit).

The white-haired woman from the southeast corner unit was standing in the courtyard, watching her poodle sniff the grass, and she smiled and waved as I went by, or rather, as Basil was dragging me by.

“You look far too pretty to be walking a dog,” she said, and that was a very nice thing to hear but also dangerously resembled the beginning of a conversation.

“Oh, more like she’s walking me,” I said, but returned her smile and ducked inside to the mailboxes where I was promptly confronted by The Girl Who Lives Below Me and for some reason she very nearly glowed with good will to the entire world and most pointedly toward me. I did a double take at her smile because it’s not something you see terribly often.

“Hi there,” she said, brushing past me on the stairs. “You look really pretty!”

“Thanks,” I said again, and thought it might be time to consider, at least every once in a while, leaving the building sans baseball cap and Levis, in something more dressy. I had a simple suit on, and couldn’t imagine it was worthy of not one but two comments but I suppose it’s a real departure from what I wear when I’d rather just be comfortable, which is just about all the time I’m not in a suit.

I waited until 8:00 to venture to the Designated Dog Area, not wanting to get caught up in the usual ‘dog traffic’ that seems to be there every evening a half hour earlier. Basil could tend to her business, and with any luck I wouldn’t have a single conversation with anybody.

That was my plan, and I intended to stick to it.

For the record, I failed miserably. I was halfway through when I was stopped by The Young Married Couple With The Very Old Red Dog, and we chatted about a recent motorcycle trip they’d taken to Moab. Once free of them, I rounded the corner and stepped literally right into Stephanie, who is best friends with someone I used to work with, lives on the third floor, southwest corner, and has two dogs (a bulldog and a cocker spaniel), so obviously we had to catch up on what was new with That Person I Used To Work With and of course, in the world(s) of our dog(s). That took a while.

Finally, The Designated Dog Area.

Not a soul in sight. I slipped off Basil’s leash and let her begin her nightly prowling around. In about fifteen minutes she seemed ready to return home, so I re-fastened the leash and away we went.

Away about ten steps, anyway. It took just that long for us to encounter a woman I’d never seen before, about my age, with a dog very similar to Basil, just older, and black. Neither of us extended a greeting at first, but when your animal is straining at your leash to get at someone else’s animal likewise about to exhaust the maximum strain capacity of their own leash and sniff out a ‘hello’, you pretty much have to say something.

Which meant, in a nutshell, my campaign failed even further.

There went another ten minutes. I learned her name was Maggie, she lived two buildings over, she’d bought her place the same month and year I bought mine, she was divorced (from an Aquarius, she offered, as if it explained it all), she had two grown kids and just the one dog, worked as a paralegal, thought the pizza at Manetto’s up the street was much better than the pasta around the corner, and gosh it was so great talking with me she hoped we’d run into each other again.

Which, I’m quite sure now, will absolutely happen. She was, after all, really nice. Just as everyone is that I’ve met, and who make my treks across the courtyard that much longer. I suppose it’s time I resigned myself to the fact that unless: a) I move, or b) overcome my almost genetic predisposition to small talk with relative strangers (and I don’t predict either happening any time soon), this is just the way it is and is going to be. So ironically, it seemed, a mere week or so after deciding I was at my limit of people I wanted to know, my limit has expanded to include yet someone else.

I thought about that before I fell asleep last night, especially after spending more minutes with Lainie, and taking two phone calls from Book Club Ladies who just ‘wanted to catch up’, as if anybody had fallen that far behind, our only having cancelled Monday’s meeting due to the holiday. I thought about that and realized, if I could deduct all these minutes from my evening, it would likely be at least an hour and a half earlier, and I could be finishing that Tom Wolfe I started Saturday within minutes of finishing another (the man’s writing is addictive) instead of having to stop reading at the end of a chapter because if I didn’t I wouldn’t get enough sleep.

Tomorrow, I thought.

I’ll just try it again tomorrow.

My resolve restored, I slept somewhat like a rock and had Basil out the door in the morning with enough time that I didn’t have to worry about traffic and as I headed to my car it occurred to me that, much as I like people, it’s nice to have a few minutes coming and going that you just don’t have to deal with them. I’d say enough “Good morning”s at work, I thought, feeling the beginning of Hospitality Fatigue stirring. By the time I’d progressed to the “Good Evening”s, a little silence would be great. Like a tonic.

Just as were the few moments of silence I enjoyed until I was halfway across the parking lot.

“Well good morning, Young Lady!” The familiar booming a.m. greeting from Bill, returning from the work out room, and I suppose, as I’ve observed before, you’d have to be his age to say it so genuinely. “You have a great day!” he said, “and if you need me, I’ll be…”

“On the golf course,” I finished for him, and therein concluded our morning routine.

Of course Maggie was just entering the carports then, too, so we ‘got all caught up’ on whatever it was we hadn’t talked about the night before, and there went a “Good morning!” and a “Have a great day!”, and I wasn’t even at work yet.

Much as I dislike admitting complete defeat, I think it’s time to admit this particular campaign is a lost cause.

Apparently the only way I’m going to put more time in my life is to just talk faster.