Since We're Together, We Might As Well Say, Would You Be Mine, Could You Be Mine, Won't You Be My Neighbor?
I have had close friends, casual friends, work friends, childhood friends, boyfriends, and army friends, and in every case I was able to negotiate the ups and downs of the relationships because friendship is easy to figure out. The relationship that I find rather tricky is the one between me and my neighbors. I suppose there are neighborhoods like the ones you see on TV, where everybody is always running in the kitchen door of everybody else, but in my reality, the neighborhood always includes a rather large contingent of crazy people. You can pick your nose, you can pick your neighborhood, but rarely can you pick your neighbors – they just come with the house.
In every apartment building I have ever lived in (and I have never truly lived in a sketchy neighborhood), I have been awakened at night by odd wailing or screaming, banging and bumping. Every house I have ever occupied has come with some weird guy down the street who mows the lawn wearing a purple satin robe and a miner’s helmet or a reclusive woman who leaves letters for the mailman addressed to various news anchors with the notation “More Chapters” on the envelope. The crazy people are easy to identify and avoid (or interact with if you like crazy), but the other “regular” people take a while to figure out. And when you figure out that there are some you don’t like or can’t get along with or don’t understand, what can you do? They are going to be right next door or down the street or around the corner until one of you moves away. However, when you are lucky, you find someone who is neighborly, willing to help you out, to lend eggs and sugar, or to just spend some time chatting.
I learned a valuable lesson in my apartment in Ardmore, which was in a building of single units – everyone lived alone. I befriended a seemingly normal girl who lived on the top floor of my stairwell, and occasionally we would go out and have a beer or sometimes she would knock on my door after work and just come in for a while to tell me about her day. She was not exactly a friend I would have sought out, but she seemed harmless enough. Unfortunately, I was wrong. She began to stalk me, knocking on my door every time she went by it, and on the occasions when I would answer it, she would come in looking to be fed and regale me yet again with the tales of her terrible job. Eventually I would come home from work, change and head out for a walk so that I would not be home when she got home. When my walk was over, I would check the area near the building for her car, and if I saw it, I would scoot along the side of the building so that she couldn’t see me out the window. I would creep as quietly as I could up the stairs and into my apartment, where immediately I would turn on the TV and the water so that I could claim that I had not heard any knocks. If she did manage to spot me, I would immediately pick up the phone and explain that it was a long, lost relative, so I really needed to be alone. She was holding me hostage in my apartment because we had stepped past neighborly in an attempt at friendship, and when it didn't work out, I had nowhere to run. All I wanted in the world was for her to move away because I loved my apartment, but in the end she outlasted me and I got married and moved away.
When the HP and I first moved into a house, I found myself completely unprepared for the etiquette of dealing with neighbors because my parents rarely dealt with theirs (probably because before I was aware of what was going on, they had met them and found them to be crazy). Fate forced us to meet our first next door neighbors however, when the water line from the main to our house broke when we were away for the weekend. We came home late on a Sunday, two month old baby in tow, to a house with no water. Fortunately the water line break was a well-known problem in the neighborhood (apparently built by a shady contractor using substandard pipes). Everybody knew that you could run a hose from a neighbor’s house into the outlet for your own hose, and pressurize your house with their water until the pipes were repaired. We didn’t know our neighbors, but they seemed friendly enough, so we knocked on their door and they immediately agreed to help us out. From that encounter we would occasionally chat about how long the landlady was taking to fix the problem, and sometimes we’d stay and the kids would play. Eventually, the wife became our daughter’s part time day care provider, and we became friendly, inviting each other to parties, sharing stories about the kids, and watching each other’s houses during vacations. However, two years later when it was time for us to move, none of us really knew what to do. They were very close to our daughter and had helped us out a lot, so we all went out for a farewell dinner and promised to keep in touch. During my first few trips home from Kentucky I would stop by and see them and the kids would play, but eventually it seemed strange to keep going there. We didn’t have a friendship in place, we were neighborly, and neighborly just doesn’t seem to last “across the miles and over the years.”
When we got to Kentucky, I did not find anyone particularly neighborly, and our next door neighbor actually turned and ran inside one afternoon when she saw me coming back from the playground with my daughter. On one side were an older couple with no kids (and no interest in kids) and next to them was a crazy who invited me in one day to see how she had covered all of her linoleum tile with shelf paper. I spent a lot of time alone there, eventually making a few friends from other parts of post. But over time the neighbors began to change, and for the most part each addition to the block was an improvement over the people who had left. The crazy moved out and a couple with a daughter moved in. I saw them outside having a beer the night before I left for a trip back east and as I was leaving I begged my husband “Please go befriend them before the crazies get them.” More nice people moved in, more crazy people moved out, and by the time we were set to move again, we lived on a great friendly block. All the moms could hang out together outside while the kids played, and after dark everyone went about their own business. We would lend things back and forth, watch each others kids on occasion, and attend each other’s parties, but we never started walking in each other’s kitchen doors. I really miss them, enough to make a real effort to keep in touch, because the Army may bring us back together again, and if we don't live right in each other's backyards, we might indeed have a chance to become good friends.
Companionship and favors are not the only advantages I have received from being neighborly. Often neighbors have stuff for their kids that you don’t plan to get for your kids. For example, I have no plans to ever purchase a trampoline, partly for all of the nagging parental worries that someone could get horribly injured, but mainly because I don’t like to buy things that are that big. I really don’t want to buy something like a trampoline or swingset, because once the kids tire of them (and they will probably sooner than later) you just have a big thing in the backyard, gathering pollen and leaves, killing the grass underneath, and generally obstructing the vista of the yard. Fortunately for us, we have always had neighbors with outdoor play equipment. Our current neighbors bought the trampoline for their daughter on her seventh birthday. I was hoping for 40 days of rain, so that I would not have to go outside and hear the nonstop pleas of the kids to jump on the trampoline. But the very first day that she invited our kids over to bounce with her, her mom stuck her head out the door and said the magic words “Billy and I wouldn’t mind if you put the little ones up on the trampoline when we’re at work and the other kids are at school.” Now I have all of the advantages of a trampoline without the dead grass, and I scored it with the goodwill I had amassed by being neighborly and occasionally getting their daughter from the school bus.
Here in Virginia, typically the first thing every neighbor tells me is how soon she will be moving away, as if to ward of any advances of friendship I might make. Many of the houses around me are empty, and so I find myself alone a lot of the time, missing the convivial days back in Kentucky. At least I have the memories of Kentucky and the hope that one by one the houses around me may fill up with people who aren’t afraid to be neighborly.
In every apartment building I have ever lived in (and I have never truly lived in a sketchy neighborhood), I have been awakened at night by odd wailing or screaming, banging and bumping. Every house I have ever occupied has come with some weird guy down the street who mows the lawn wearing a purple satin robe and a miner’s helmet or a reclusive woman who leaves letters for the mailman addressed to various news anchors with the notation “More Chapters” on the envelope. The crazy people are easy to identify and avoid (or interact with if you like crazy), but the other “regular” people take a while to figure out. And when you figure out that there are some you don’t like or can’t get along with or don’t understand, what can you do? They are going to be right next door or down the street or around the corner until one of you moves away. However, when you are lucky, you find someone who is neighborly, willing to help you out, to lend eggs and sugar, or to just spend some time chatting.
I learned a valuable lesson in my apartment in Ardmore, which was in a building of single units – everyone lived alone. I befriended a seemingly normal girl who lived on the top floor of my stairwell, and occasionally we would go out and have a beer or sometimes she would knock on my door after work and just come in for a while to tell me about her day. She was not exactly a friend I would have sought out, but she seemed harmless enough. Unfortunately, I was wrong. She began to stalk me, knocking on my door every time she went by it, and on the occasions when I would answer it, she would come in looking to be fed and regale me yet again with the tales of her terrible job. Eventually I would come home from work, change and head out for a walk so that I would not be home when she got home. When my walk was over, I would check the area near the building for her car, and if I saw it, I would scoot along the side of the building so that she couldn’t see me out the window. I would creep as quietly as I could up the stairs and into my apartment, where immediately I would turn on the TV and the water so that I could claim that I had not heard any knocks. If she did manage to spot me, I would immediately pick up the phone and explain that it was a long, lost relative, so I really needed to be alone. She was holding me hostage in my apartment because we had stepped past neighborly in an attempt at friendship, and when it didn't work out, I had nowhere to run. All I wanted in the world was for her to move away because I loved my apartment, but in the end she outlasted me and I got married and moved away.
When the HP and I first moved into a house, I found myself completely unprepared for the etiquette of dealing with neighbors because my parents rarely dealt with theirs (probably because before I was aware of what was going on, they had met them and found them to be crazy). Fate forced us to meet our first next door neighbors however, when the water line from the main to our house broke when we were away for the weekend. We came home late on a Sunday, two month old baby in tow, to a house with no water. Fortunately the water line break was a well-known problem in the neighborhood (apparently built by a shady contractor using substandard pipes). Everybody knew that you could run a hose from a neighbor’s house into the outlet for your own hose, and pressurize your house with their water until the pipes were repaired. We didn’t know our neighbors, but they seemed friendly enough, so we knocked on their door and they immediately agreed to help us out. From that encounter we would occasionally chat about how long the landlady was taking to fix the problem, and sometimes we’d stay and the kids would play. Eventually, the wife became our daughter’s part time day care provider, and we became friendly, inviting each other to parties, sharing stories about the kids, and watching each other’s houses during vacations. However, two years later when it was time for us to move, none of us really knew what to do. They were very close to our daughter and had helped us out a lot, so we all went out for a farewell dinner and promised to keep in touch. During my first few trips home from Kentucky I would stop by and see them and the kids would play, but eventually it seemed strange to keep going there. We didn’t have a friendship in place, we were neighborly, and neighborly just doesn’t seem to last “across the miles and over the years.”
When we got to Kentucky, I did not find anyone particularly neighborly, and our next door neighbor actually turned and ran inside one afternoon when she saw me coming back from the playground with my daughter. On one side were an older couple with no kids (and no interest in kids) and next to them was a crazy who invited me in one day to see how she had covered all of her linoleum tile with shelf paper. I spent a lot of time alone there, eventually making a few friends from other parts of post. But over time the neighbors began to change, and for the most part each addition to the block was an improvement over the people who had left. The crazy moved out and a couple with a daughter moved in. I saw them outside having a beer the night before I left for a trip back east and as I was leaving I begged my husband “Please go befriend them before the crazies get them.” More nice people moved in, more crazy people moved out, and by the time we were set to move again, we lived on a great friendly block. All the moms could hang out together outside while the kids played, and after dark everyone went about their own business. We would lend things back and forth, watch each others kids on occasion, and attend each other’s parties, but we never started walking in each other’s kitchen doors. I really miss them, enough to make a real effort to keep in touch, because the Army may bring us back together again, and if we don't live right in each other's backyards, we might indeed have a chance to become good friends.
Companionship and favors are not the only advantages I have received from being neighborly. Often neighbors have stuff for their kids that you don’t plan to get for your kids. For example, I have no plans to ever purchase a trampoline, partly for all of the nagging parental worries that someone could get horribly injured, but mainly because I don’t like to buy things that are that big. I really don’t want to buy something like a trampoline or swingset, because once the kids tire of them (and they will probably sooner than later) you just have a big thing in the backyard, gathering pollen and leaves, killing the grass underneath, and generally obstructing the vista of the yard. Fortunately for us, we have always had neighbors with outdoor play equipment. Our current neighbors bought the trampoline for their daughter on her seventh birthday. I was hoping for 40 days of rain, so that I would not have to go outside and hear the nonstop pleas of the kids to jump on the trampoline. But the very first day that she invited our kids over to bounce with her, her mom stuck her head out the door and said the magic words “Billy and I wouldn’t mind if you put the little ones up on the trampoline when we’re at work and the other kids are at school.” Now I have all of the advantages of a trampoline without the dead grass, and I scored it with the goodwill I had amassed by being neighborly and occasionally getting their daughter from the school bus.
Here in Virginia, typically the first thing every neighbor tells me is how soon she will be moving away, as if to ward of any advances of friendship I might make. Many of the houses around me are empty, and so I find myself alone a lot of the time, missing the convivial days back in Kentucky. At least I have the memories of Kentucky and the hope that one by one the houses around me may fill up with people who aren’t afraid to be neighborly.
posted by Shannon at 10:33 PM
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