When I walk through the crowds of people as I often do in Midtown, which sometimes feels like a buzzing hornets nest of humanity, I can't help categorizing them. From the outside, people become types our brains inevitable classify according to previously encountered examples. Finance bros carrying golf clubs, old retired tourist couple, weird cat lady, insufferable teenager, sweet shuffling war veteran, and so on. But to their friends and family they transcend type and are fully sketched human beings. Like characters in a rich novel composed of habits and memories and tics and quirks and funny anecdotes and a nuanced view of the world that is constantly being shaded in. Likewise to the world out there - at least the parts that bother to notice me - I fit into some pigeon hole or other. To them I'm flat. An avatar. As we get to know each other we fill in each other's details - subjectively of course. And make them characters in our stories.