It happened again, just before Christmas. My parents have a dog, and my boyfriend and I were walking him around their Seattle neighborhood. The dog, a genial black Labrador named Beau, trotted ahead of us, his coat shiny in the light rain, while we walked silently, the hoods of our jackets swushing past our cold ears. Like the rest of Seattle, my old neighborhood has grown richer over the years, and as the homes have acquired electronic gates and sport-utility vehicles, they seem to have lost their people. We had seen no one since we left the house. And then we saw them.

The only people dog walkers tend to meet are other dog walkers. A block ahead another couple, tall and dark-haired, appeared on the corner. Their dog, a young russet retriever, dashed across the street, barreling toward us and then reeling away, delighted to see other living creatures. “Lucy! Lucy!” her owners called futilely after her. She circled us a few times and then led us up the road. We said hello to her owners. They were young, like us, and smiling and open-faced. The woman carried an umbrella over her head; the man wore a University of Wisconsin sweatshirt. They seemed like new arrivals, exploring the neighborhood for the first time. “Do you live around here?” asked the woman, eager.

I hesitated. “No,” I said, “but my parents do.” And I gestured vaguely toward the southeast, as if my parents’ home were visible across open fields instead of obscured behind hills and other houses. Beau stood patiently at my side; Lucy leaped a low wall and began pawing under the bracken. We talked for a bit, the rain pocking off the woman’s umbrella. I said we lived in Eugene, but that I had grown up here, in Seattle. We introduced our dogs, but not ourselves. I liked the young couple; they seemed bright, and energetic, and interesting. But I wanted to keep walking, to avoid telling them my name or where, exactly, my parents lived. I used the dog as an excuse, and we parted, they moving down the hill and we moving up. At the top I paused, slowed by regret. Nice people, nice conversation, and yet I had told them nothing. I had been polite, but not truly friendly. That’s what people from Seattle are always said to be like: aloof in spite of ourselves.

 Every time I catch myself being a Seattleite, I’m too late. I did it once on a Seattle city bus, when I was in high school; I tried to give a fellow rider directions, and realized only after the bus had rumbled off how much simpler it would have been to have shown her the bus shelter around the corner instead. On Christmas Day last year, just a few days after that dog walk in the rain, I fell victim once more. It was late at night, after the holiday’s big dinner party, and as I carted empty wine bottles outside, a taxi driver hailed me from the street.

He was a young, tired-looking Somalian who had gotten turned around so many times in my neighborhood’s winding streets that he had given up. The address he wanted wasn’t far off, but it wasn’t ours. He kept repeating it, hopeful, willing me to finally succumb and admit that yes, actually, I did need a taxi. I tried to give him directions. He didn’t have a map. I could have gone inside and gotten my parents’ old Kroll map of Seattle and shown him where to go. I could have drawn a little map for him. Instead, I apologized and said I hoped he found the address and went back inside and shut the door.

I didn’t even wish him a happy Christmas.