I seem to have the worst luck with my neighbors. I don’t know any of them. The ones that I did know have since moved on.

Last week, for instance, I met my downstairs neighbor when he started pounding on my door one morning. Turns out the work the plumber was doing created a hole in the pipe going down to his apartment. So he was coming up to find out why the hell blackened nasty water was streaming into his bedroom.

Or today. Take today. I was walking out the door to go meet a friend for lunch when I noticed that the huge green metal dumpster out back had been turned on its side. I won’t even speculate how. That thing must be heavy. But I noticed it was only about an inch away from my caretaker’s car. Upon closer inspection, it looked like it had hit the car, ripped off a side panel and put an inch-long gash in the body.

So my dilemma: do I call my caretaker (who is probably enjoying a leisurely Saturday morning) and tell him someone fucked up his car overnight, or do I keep my mouth shut and move on and let someone else ruin his day?

After some waffling (and not the tasty kind of waffling) I called him up and told him about it. His reaction was, “Oh, looks like it missed my car. That’s good.”

No, I thought that too. But it hit your car.

I think I did the right thing. But at this rate, the whole building is going to view me as a harbinger of doom and destruction.