Who Are the Unexpected Friends in Your Life? ↳
I live in NYC in a huge building and have made friends with so many of my neighbors. Having a kid helps — it’s easy to meet parents of other kids on the local playground and older people like to engage with little ones. Once after chatting in the elevator with a woman in her 90s about my toddler’s potty training, she stopped by with a potty training book that had a sticker chart. He loved it and was so enchanted that she brought it by especially for him. We became friendly — turns out she is a playwright. Eventually she invited us to the debut of one of her plays and my husband went while I wrangled the toddler. It was on a weeknight somewhere deep in Harlem. He said that at the end he realized another neighbor, our doorman and the building super were in the audience too — just the whole building quietly supporting her.