SHE CLEANED UP HER ACT.

One of the great things about New Yorkers is their aloofness. The majority of people living in a Manhattan high rise doesn’t know or talk to their neighbors. It’s just something ingrained with citizens of The Big Apple. Before I moved to ‘lalaland’ I lived in a lovely rent controlled building on the west side of Manhattan and never, ever met anyone in the building. I occasionally would give a quick nod to the people in the next apartment…and they were my parents.

Part of this phenomenon is because many New Yorkers are frightened of becoming a victim of a crime and feel that if they mind their own business and just keep their eyes straight ahead nothing will happen. The people I’m talking about are members of the N.Y. police department.

Because of this background I thoroughly understand the woman in Milan, Italy who wanted nothing to do with the city or anyone around her. She had good reason to be suspicious of everything – it seems she had a bout of influenza 26-years ago and it terrified Carmela so much that she tried to seal herself off from germs by barricading herself in her home and never came out again. Her fear of germs made Howard Hughes look like a greeter at some strip club.

Her plight came to the attention of Italian authorities after her brother, who leaves tinned food outside her front door, called police to say that upcoming medical treatment would prevent him from carrying on. Some speculate that he had gotten two severe hernias from carrying the tons of canned food. He admitted that he had not seen his sister in 10 years. When Italian health officials came to remove the woman from the apartment she has not left in more than two decades they had to don respirators against the stench. One of officials said it was even worse than inhaling a NYC taxi driver.

When they finally broke into the apartment to take her to the hospital they found Carmela, who is in her late 50s, weighing 66 pounds and had hair seven feet long. However, she was wearing eye liner. It seems the eccentric, shy Looney bird had sealed the apartment’s windows with adhesive tape and the shutters jammed shut. Apparently for entertainment she would sit in front of an old radio and watch it. Carmela’s main contact with neighbors has been to shout a single message through her door. “Shut the window on the landing.”

I think that this slightly erratic 55-year recluse should be made an honorary New Yorker. She even looks like some of them who stand in front of Bloomingdale’s and talk to the mannequins.