I enjoy downtown. I wish that I could work downtown from time to time. There is a certain energy, a feeling. The shops opening up, the people bustling to work. It's amazing to me that so many people come together to live and work quite literally on top of one another. It's like a modern day Tower of Babel. And yet, these fantasiticlly social creatures seem to have so much trouble just talking to one another. Have you ever tried to engage a stranger in a conversation? 9 times out of 10 you we get a look like you are a leper or an insurance salesman. (BTW I happen to know an insurance salesman and he is quite pleasant. OTOH, he sells senior health insurance, so he has never had the oppurtunity to sell me anything; Perhaps that is why I find him so tolerable.)

Case in point, yesterday, going out to wait for the bus I see a man waiting between the inner and outer doors of our building. I ask if he is waiting for the bus, too. He mumbles something affirmative. I ask if the bus has gone by yet (the bus route takes it past our building around a several others and back before stopping at our building). He mumbles something negative. I take a moment to consider the weather, which is unseasonable warm (incredibly so, as a fact of fact) and decide to wait outside. However, not 20 feet outside the building, I realize that I am going to be trapped in a moving vechicle for the next hour or so and that I should really avail myself of the restroom inside our building. Considering how I appear to this man waiting just inside the door (I ask if he is waiting for the bus, step outside, look up the street, and walk back inside), I mention that I had better hit the bathroom before I go. Based on the expression on his face, I might well have said "I'm off to club baby harp seals" or "I have this rash that won't go away" or, worst of all these days, "I voted for Bush, twice".

Just an odd observation that struck me.