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I mentioned earlier in my posts, which I'm sure you're all read up on, that as a flower delivery professional, I sometimes get a peek into complete stranger's lives. Sometimes it's more than a peek, sometimes it's a panoramic view. On one such occasion, I had a very simple delivery to someone on the middle East Side of Manhattan. The delivery was a humble offering, nothing too overtly romantic or histrionic, just your beautifully arranged Calla Lilies and Tulips; an effectively modest design of flowers that says "I'm thinking of you." The card, which I had printed out was equally low-keyed and warmly stated: "I will always be there for you. Always."

I rang the buzzer on the destination and a young woman answered the door, her eyes red and swollen and her general demeanor seemed as though she had just been run through an emotional blender. I handed her the vase of flowers and she looked at me as though she were portraying Blanche DuBois and I the paperboy in a Streetcar Named Desire; it was a mix of confusion, hope and utter despair. She invited me in and wandered around to the kitchen where she poured a glass of water and handed it to me. I didn't ask for a glass of water, but I wasn't about to start pointing out symptoms of her unraveling mind, so I happily accepted her generous gift and drank it down while she looked at me with a penetrating stare.

She sat on the couch and gazed at some point in the future and it was then that I noticed that her living room looked as though she had not been outside in several days. Pizza boxes, soda and beer cans, magazines and newspapers seemed to compete with each other to take up the most floor space. What I can only guess was a pair of sweat pants, even too soiled for someone as seemingly depressed as this woman, was balled up and now being used as a pillow. I put the flowers on the table in front of her and she gave me a far off look before asking whom the flowers were from. I told her there was no name on the card and handed it to her gently. She opened it up and began to cry. But these were not the tears of someone who was broken, in fact, they were tears one has after running a marathon. It was the rain after a long dry heatwave. She thanked me the way someone thanks the captain of a boat who saves them after being lost at sea in a life raft for weeks. This woman then asked me what it was like outside and I told her it was unseasonably warm. She smiled with an inner relief and I knew I had just seen someone saved from the brink.

There is a saying about being lazy and it goes something like, "lazy people work twice as hard". (For the record, I never understood that adage as the definition of a lazy person is literally someone who doesn't work, so if they work twice as hard, how can they be lazy?) I never considered myself lazy until the intercom in my apartment broke and I was forced to descend 4 flights of stairs each time someone decided to play a little game I like to call "Who's Home?" It's a game wherein anyone who needs a signature for a package or wants a petition signed pretends they're a chimpanzee pressing buttons for their food in a lab experiment.

On this particular Saturday morning at nine o'clock, the delightful chime of my door buzzer alerted me that someone was downstairs. My friends know to call directly to my cellphone so I assumed it was a delivery for a book I had recently ordered. I happily pressed the button opening the front door to my building and threw on a pair of pants as I am sure no delivery person needs to see me pantless on a Saturday morning. A few minutes went by and no one knocked on my door. My mind rationalized that it was probably someone who forgot their keys and was hoping one of their neighbors would rather have a murderer in the building than walk down four flights. Out of curiosity, I stuck my head into the hallway to listen for gunshots or screams, but instead was treated to something much more horrifying. Through the echoey din of the stairwell I heard the words that sent panic coursing through my body: "Excuse me, have you read our magazine, The Watchtower?"

I don't know a lot of my neighbors, but I have watched them release a torrent of passive aggressive abuse on people in the building that would make most of our mothers look on in horror. I have seen memos taped up in the hallway with objective pronouns clearly pointed at that guy in 3-F who didn't recycle and passing comments like "Hey, you're that guy who listens to Tori Amos really loud all night" and "Wow, you and your boyfriend really like loud sex". If they found out I let some Jehovah's Witnesses into the building because I couldn't muster the energy to let someone in personally, I can't imagine memo taped up next to our mailboxes with particular phrases underlined for added affect pointed specifically at me.

I quickly threw on my shoes and ran downstairs where two well-dressed and middle aged women were hovering in front of an open door. An attractive young woman stared, wide-eyed at the pair as they asked her if was interested in saving her soul. I interjected, trying to repair the damage I had inflicted on my hapless co-inhabitants. "Excuse me! I'm sorry, you rang my bell and I thought you were someone else. You're going to have to leave the building." The two Jehovah's Witnesses stared at me as though I had grown horns and was now poking them with a pitchfork. They responded with the calm assurance of talking to someone already in hell. Our rather calm, but heated, discussion began to draw others from their apartments like curious woodland creatures checking to see which of their friends was shot.

Finally I walked the two out of the building and as I walked back to my apartment one of my neighbors confronted me and said "Dude, you got to come down and let people in. That's not cool." No. It was not cool. But what was even less cool was that same day someone had put a label on my buzzer by the front door which simply read "Broken". (I've always wondered if the people who created label makers ever realized the passive aggressive uses for which it would be employed on the population.) I was about to remove the label and thought better of it. I agreed to accept this as punishment for being a terrible neighbor. On my way back upstairs I picked up a copy of The Watchtower the women had left in the lobby and read it cover to cover as penance for Sloth.

As you know from my earlier entry, I'm involved in online dating. Involved might sound a little clinical. I'm destroying my fragile ego with online dating. That's probably more accurate. I've gone on a few dates and had very nice conversations with some very nice women. Most importantly I've learned one thing: Women say they want a man with "a sense of humor" but what they mean is "their sense of humor". And that, my friends, is a whole different ballgame.

Let me illustrate with an anecdote from one of my most recent date-sasters. My new potential life partner and I are at an outdoor cafe enjoying the New York summer, when a woman sits down next to us with a "comfort dog"; one of those little canines you keep in your purse presumably because women don't carry enough in them. My date compliments the woman on owning such a lovely animal and then turns to me and asks: "Do you like dogs?" To which I reply: "I don't know if I'm that hungry." To which she responded with a blank stare before the corners of her mouth turned down into what can only be described as a date-ending scowl.

You see, what I did wrong there was not accurately assessing my date's ability to view eating a dog as humorous and paid the price for it, not to mention the lunch tab, which came out to roughly $50. However, it did teach me a valuable lesson: Don't EVER make a joke on a date unless you know if your date is the type of person who watches Arrested Development or Three and a Half Men. 

For most foreigners learning our language, the silent "e" is a strange concept. Words like "knife" "wise" and "pure" seem to antagonize their sense of logic and while we native speakers have grown accustomed to its annoying presence like a drunk relative we dismiss offhandedly, we take it's annoyance for granted. As a flower delivery specialist (I'm trying out this new title, I think it gives me an air of dignity) I work with a lot of people who've immigrated to our country and, on occasion, am asked about several of our linguistic anomalies. Another big one is the "gh" standing for "f". I try to explain to them that "sometimes it's just an 'f' sound" and am met with a look as if I just explained why my girlfriend was out until 2 in the morning with "an old friend". It's a look of half sympathy and half disrespect. As though to say: "Hey, it's your language, whatever makes you happy." But I've also noticed recently another, more hidden lexicon, that is far more universal and equally as silent: The Silent E-diot.

Let me give you an example. A few weeks ago, I was given a beautiful gift of a wrist watch. Despite the fact that no one wears them anymore, it's one of those anachronisms I can't seem to part with and it's really the only jewelry a man can wear without being labeled a hipster or metrosexual. When I received the watch I noticed it wasn't running, so I took it to a small watch repair shop in the East Village. I handed it proudly to the employee and asked him to change the battery. He told me it would be five minutes and I could wait if I liked. Ten seconds later he handed the watch back to me and told me it didn't need a battery to which I replied: "Oh, is it broken?" He looked at me, eyes narrowed as though he were being tested and responded: "No, it needs to be wound." What followed was a very distinct and very heavy pause hanging in the air unspoken and palpable. As though God were bleeping out an expletive on television. But what should have been very audible to the trained ear was the word "idiot".

It hit me like a lightning bolt. The look, the pause, the tightened lips as though holding back this word, and the furrowed brow as though to ask: "How do you feed yourself?" And then I recalled the many, many times this has occurred in my past; the women at the end of the first date for whom I asked to see again, the DMV employee whom I asked if a library card was a sufficient form of identification, and the Genius Bar employee when I asked if I could walk in for an appointment to see someone. The myriad occasions wherein I was subject to The Silent E-diot, and like anyone learning the capricious nature of our language, didn't quite understand it's illogical complexity.