DOORMAN!

This school year has already signaled a lot of changes in my life, but one that's been a real altering experience has been my move to a new apartment in Boston.

Gone are the days of our 6 person "Brotel", gone are the endless cleanups after parties and gone are those pesky mice that made themselves at home in Hemenway 114.

Replace that with a quiet two bedroom place with no room for parties, a trash chute, laundry room and a doorman. Yeah, a doorman. It's a little different.

The idea of a doorman still irks me, it's just not my style. People calling me 'sir' in general just makes me uncomfortable. I like relating to people and the doorman just reminds me of some weird underground caste system I want no part of.

That's why my roommate Nick and I have decided to make it our personal mission to get to know them. There are 4. So far we have met Steve, Henry and Gavin, and though we know the 4th, a lady, we can't seem to remember her name (we think its Regina). Though the latter part of that sentence kind of makes my arguement sound dumb, we talk to the lady a lot and even gave her a nice loaf of bread to bring back home the other day.

The whole process has been slow-going, they seem kind of reluctant to acknowledge our efforts, but it's coming. If you smile and say hello enough in a day, people are bound to reciprocate it eventually, it just happens. Today out of nowhere I had Steve stop me and ask how classes were going and what I had on tap for the weekend. It was pretty cool. He doesn't remember my name but he remembers the face and I know now that he appreciates that hello in the morning.

It's really easy to walk past people, I know, I've done it all my life, but I'm glad we've taken on the challenge of cracking the doormen. It sounds stupid in the general scheme of things, but it's cool to connect with people we take for granted so much of the time.

Plus, it'll help further down the road when they start putting up with our antics, figure some positive repoire to start things off can't hurt.

But maybe I'm just musing...