I poked my head out just as the mail carrier was leaving, and I made some remark about the weather, and she asked me who-all actually lived in our building, since we constantly get mail addressed to former residents who have failed to set up their mail forwarding, and we discussed for a little while the volume of mail we get for two or three particular people that none of us now living here have ever heard of.

You may be saying, "It sounds like she distracted you, then, rather than vice versa." I maintain that I have been completing this task, albeit unknowingly, for some time. Observe:

Pictured with this proof is the single mailbox that receives all the building's mail. There is no proper list of residents on it. The three rectangles on the left are some of those stickers that used to be packaged with Moleskine notebooks; on each of the stickers is the name of someone who used to live here, probably years ago. The stickers bear the marks of unsuccessful attempts to pull them off the metal. Once a month or so I run into one of my upstairs neighbors and we go, "You know, the landlord has never put up a thing with a correct list of who lives here, one of us should do that."

And indeed sometime in the spring someone from upstairs got around to doing so, and their slightly testy note about who lives here and who doesn't was taped to the mailbox for a day or two and was then gone, I know not why, maybe bad adhesive. I told the mail carrier I would put up another one but I suspect I will not get around to this any faster than my neighbors did.

Thus we, the residents of our building, are collectively responsible for having distracted the mailperson for the past who knows how long.