Feeling neighbourly

So I have a neighbour on the first floor.

We were leaving town one morning a few weeks ago. Before departing, I had to make a quick trip to the nearby corner store, to pick up some small thing that we needed for the trip that I now can't recall. When I got downstairs, I realized I had forgotten my wallet at home. I called upstairs, my son put the thing into a plastic bag and flung it from the balcony.

Just before he did, I thought to myself, what if it falls on the first floor chhajja (parapet), the only one that projects out far enough between our flat and the ground? What will I do? Well, gag me with a spoon, that's exactly what happened. The wallet-in-a-bag fluttered down and landed on that chhajja, right outside the window of this neighbour I mentioned above.

Things happen. Anyway, I got whatever it was that we needed using some cash I had in my pocket. As we were leaving, my wife knocked at this neighbour's door. When he opened up, she told him what had happened and asked if she could come in, lean out their window and pick up the wallet.

"No", he said. "Go find a ladder and climb up from outside", he said.

She looked at him open-mouthed, astounded by this inexplicable crassness. "Thanks for your help", she said.

(Then she stepped across the landing to the other first floor neighbour's door, knocked and asked if she could come in, climb out of the window onto the chhajja and retrieve the wallet. "Of course, of course," he said. A minute later, she had the wallet).

Neighbourly feeling. We have it in droves.

So I'm trying, every time I meet the man who suggested the ladder, to thank him profusely for helping.