Have a great day, pass it on

One friendly gesture can set off a chain reaction

In my nearly three years living in a highrise apartment building in Hamilton, I’ve come to notice certain unique human experiences that come with urban dwelling.

I don’t want to know my neighbours. It’s not because I’m unfriendly — in fact, quite the opposite — but because the proximity of apartment neighbours is such that a relationship would be awkward and uncomfortable. As a teenager, I dreamt of living in New York City in the fashion of the characters on Friends — inseparable from my neighbours-turned-companions, wandering daily into each other’s personal spaces, sharing every experience in close quarters, face to face.

What once seemed the perfect picture of urban romance now strikes me as a nightmare of privacy encroachment.

I know it’s not just me. I try to be mindful of acknowledging the people who live on my floor, at least, but even that I struggle with. More often than not, my neighbours and I avoid each other — we avoid eye contact, walking in unison, and making conversation.

I can hear one side-neighbour snore at night, and a couple upstairs scream at each other. The intimacies I easily sense alert me to the reality of how much of my life is audible to the people around, above, and below my apartment. On the living room side you’ve got your heated personal conversations and late-night karaoke sessions. On the bedroom side, you’ve got, well, some other stuff. Anyone walking through the hallway can hear what I’m watching on TV, and smell the spices I’m cooking with.

I repeat, I do not want to know my neighbours, because they already know too much. This mentality of avoidance extends to an entire building of people. From my apartment’s front door to the building’s exit, I want to slip through silent and unacknowledged, as though under a cloak of invisibility.

Sadly, garments that vanish their wearers don’t exist (yet, at least — looking at you, Elon). So, instead, there is a sort of code among apartment neighbours. We keep a cool and wary distance to maintain the illusion of privacy, and to avoid at all costs moments of contact, beneath which we are all thinking, “I know about the weird crap you do.”

While taking the elevator, most apartment-dwellers would like to behave as though nobody else exists, even while trapped in a hotbox of mingling sweat, takeout pizza, and wet dog. However, there is a rather magical phenomenon that arises when you frequently ride crowded elevators. It only takes one person uttering a pleasantry to set off a chain reaction of pleasantries. Even when I’m stressed out or distracted, or otherwise in a state wherein I have no intention of speaking to my fellow elevator occupants, if the person exiting before me says “have a great day,” I too will say something to that effect as I reach my floor, assuming that I’m not talking to an empty space. I’ve witnessed and participated in this routine countless times, like a game of telephone: “Have a great day, pass it on.”

The sentiment might change slightly as it travels from person to person, but it is a nearly unfailing system of connectivity in a building of residents who would often rather fabricate lag-time while locking their doors than end up sharing an elevator with one of their nearby neighbours.

I’ve lived in a few cities, and Hamilton is indisputably the friendliest of them all. In no other place have I heard strangers so consistently say thank you to each other. I doubt that the Chain of Friendliness Phenomenon is unique to Hamilton, but it seems at least to be an indication of our strong sense of community.

If not, then it’s some sort of witchcraft, because I cannot overstate the fact that I really, really don’t want to know my neighbours.