Well-wishes

Walking down the street on New Year's Eve, after the magical 2007 bell had tolled, and it was a balmy 40 something degrees at 1:20 in the morning in the city of Chicago, I ran into (literally, she moved into me) a lovely, intoxicated girl who was earnestly discussing the merits of going into the CVS on the corner with her date. After she bumped into me, she turned to me and said, "I'm sorry, I love you. Happy New Year's."

Outside of my apartment about a half an hour later, a man walking by said, "Happy New Year" as he passed me. I wished him the same.

Yesterday, walking down the street, a girl was yelling down the street after someone in a not-too-pleasant tone of voice. When Scott and I walked in front of her on the sidewalk, she turned to us, turned on a significantly nicer tone of voice, "Happy New Year." We wished her the same.

Leaving aside the discussion of a drunk stranger telling me that she loved me, I was struck by two things. The first, of course, is how much fun it is to live in the city. These kind of random wishes don't happen in the suburbs, because you're not walking on a communal street, you're driving in your car alone. Secondly, how much friendlier people are when they have a ready-made sentence. Is it the awkwardness of not knowing what to say to strangers that keeps us silent as we pass each other on the other 364 days of the year? If we had a holiday every day, would it make us friendlier to one another, knowing that we had something to say to that person that was well-intentioned and non-intrusive, all at the same time?