3 years ago, I moved from Los Angeles to Denver with my husband and our kids. Immediately upon moving in, we met a nice couple that live next door who are around our age and have a daughter that looked around the age of our youngest son. I say “met” but it was more like a wave! and a “let me know if you need anything!”, but I was excited. New friends!

If you ask anyone here, the difference between people from LA and people in Denver has to do with ability to drive in the snow and uppity liberal views or whatever Chad on NextDoor was yelling about. But no, Chad, after growing up here for 20 years, moving to Los Angeles for 20 years, and now being back, I can tell you with extreme confidence, the difference between people in LA and people in Denver is not that, and is too long for my silly little blog post today, but in relation to the above mentioned neighbors, people in LA, while sometimes a little flaky, are pretty much your instant best friends. You say “Hi!” to someone and you’re now best friends who get pedis and mimosas together on a Wednesday and you know more about each other than your own family within like, a month! Here in Denver, people are more overtly friendly, like, they make eye-contact with strangers and wave at you like they know you, which is a serious, “you’re about to get mugged or worse” red flag in LA (that I’ve had to unlearn or relearn or however it works) but they wave at you here and say hi right in your eyes and offer up help and then they disappear back into their lives for the next three years and even though you offer to drive them to school drop off when you see them standing by a car that won’t start in the snow, or you leave your cell number and a cute little note on their door with a smiley face letting them know you were delivered a package of theirs by mistake, you never make it past the friendly waves and the how are yous. There have been no mimosas. There have been no pedis. Apparently I don’t know how to make friends the Denver way. I mean, I grew up here which is probably why I’m so awful at it. The last year doesn’t count because of the pandemic, but still.

It could also be that when we first moved here, after the waves and the offers for help, the above mentioned neighbors were outside throwing a frisbee around and it hit my window. The window I was sitting at. And to exert my space, to let the frisbee owners know that this is my lawn, I went “LA” on them not knowing it was them. And by “LA”, I mean, meanly stink-eyeing them out the window for their transgressions rather than acknowledging the innocence of the mis-catched frisbee.

Anyway.

Judging by the moving van and the photographer taking pictures of the outside of their house today, they’re moving. Don’t they know about pandemic mover’s remorse? It’s a thing. Look it up, Christine and…Chris (I don’t know his name, so he’s now Chris). I had plans for us, Christine and Chris! Chris and Billy (my husband) would be friends by the power of John Elway since they both like the Broncos. I know nothing about Christine, except she dresses in cute dresses so, of course we’d be friends.

Did they think about any of this when they made their plans to leave? Did they remember my uber services? Did they remember that I had a package of theirs? That I kept it safe from porch pirates for god’s sake?? That I wrote a note with smiley faces??

Should I approach them? Demand a friendship? Follow the moving van in my car? Haunt their house like the Brady kids taught me??

Today has been a dark day. How dare they.