Do you know your neighbors?

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JennaGlatzer

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When I was really young, I lived in a "bad" neighborhood, but the neighbors were all pals. We kids played hockey and soccer in the street, and when my mom needed butter or sugar or milk, she'd send me across the street or down the block to knock on a neighbor's door to borrow some.

When I was 10 and my dad's business did well, we moved to a hoity-toity neighborhood. My mom once sent me out to do the same "borrow some sugar" thing, but the reaction I got was so strange that I refused to ever do it again. It was like, "You want to what? Borrow my sugar?... I'll ask the maid if we have any." There were a few neighbors who were OK, but for the most part, I learned fast that this wasn't a "play in the streets, come chat on my steps" sort of place. I told myself I'd never live in a place like this when I had my own house. I'd go back to the lousy neighborhoods where people talk to each other.

When Anthony and I moved into our own house, though, I was still bordering on agoraphobic, and I never got to know my neighbors except one couple across the street who made the effort to keep coming by to chat with us. Even though I'm not agoraphobic now, I still rarely leave the house because I'm a workaholic, and I pretty much never just sit outside, or work on the car, or take out the trash, or cut the lawn like Anthony does-- which is why he knows a couple more neighbors than I do.

Anyway, we've been here about 6 years now and there's still no one I know well. Yesterday I had to switch cars with Anthony quickly, so I zipped out of the house in my pajamas, hair all a mess, acne cream on my face, at about 4 in the afternoon, and a neighbor demanded... DEMANDED... that I come take a walk with her because I looked like I was going to crack. I refused a couple of times, but finally went inside and changed and went with her. We walked a mile or so and exchanged life stories. It was neat. I tried not to be too shy, or to ramble too much, or to faint. I succeeded in at least two out of the three. I might just have my first neighbor friend. :D
 
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FADE IN:

INT. MY APARTMENT BUILDING HALLWAY

As Billy exits his apartment, he sees his neighbor, NAME UNKNOWN, unlocking her door and about to enter hers.

BILLY
How you doing?

UNKNOWN
Uh, good, thanks.

BILLY
Cool. Have a nice day.

Billy heads down the hallway as the unknown neighbor quickly enters her apartment and shuts the door. Then the sound of locking and double bolting and the chaining of a door fills the hallway. Billy, oblivious, goes on his merry way.

FADE OUT
 

Fern

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Good for you! That's exactly what you should have done. . . go for the walk and get acquainted with your neighbor. Sometimes the first move is so very hard to make, but then it is all worthwhile. Even if you never become busom buddies, it's good to have someone to call friend.

I also remember knowing all the neighbors and we had no television, so there was usually lots of visiting back and forth with our neighbors. No one does that any longer. Everyone goes home, shuts the doors and keeps to their own. Not a turn for the better as far as I'm concerned, but I'm guilty as well.
 

rich

Jenna, my neighbor on my right has two daughters. One's some kind of missionary; the other is a writer and editor, and married to a musician, truly. She lives in Brooklyn. The mom's husband died on their living room floor a few years back while I was attempting CPR on him. I know 90 percent of my block. The only ones I don't know moved in within the last two years.

It's good to have a persistent neighbor. What's surprising me is that you still feel uncomfortable meeting people when you have book signings, writing seminars, etc. I would feel uncomfortable doing that.
 

Blackheart

billythrilly7th said:
FADE IN:

INT. MY APARTMENT BUILDING HALLWAY

As Billy exits his apartment, he sees his neighbor, NAME UNKNOWN, unlocking her door and about to enter hers.

BILLY
How you doing?

UNKNOWN
Uh, good, thanks.

BILLY
Cool. Have a nice day.

Billy heads down the hallway as the unknown neighbor quickly enters her apartment and shuts the door. Then the sound of locking and double bolting and the chaining of a door fills the hallway. Billy, oblivious, goes on his merry way.

FADE OUT

Damn. Didn't she notice you look like Brad Pitt/Jerry Seinfeld/Rob Lowe?

People piss me off so I never bother with my neighbors. The last neighbor I ever talked to was a sh*t disturbing flake with an apartment full of 500 watt speakers I was tempted beat to death with an aluminum bat back in 1986
 
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Blackheart said:
Damn. Didn't she notice you look like Brad Pitt/Jerry Seinfeld/Rob Lowe?

People piss me off so I never bother with my neighbors. The last neighbor I ever talked to was a sh*t disturbing flake with an apartment full of 500 watt speakers I was tempted beat to death with an aluminum bat back in 1986

Just Seinfeld/Lowe. Not Brad Pitt.

Of course you don't know your neighbors. Who wants to dogsled two hours for a cup of sugar...

We%20built%20an%20Igloo_B.jpg


:)
 

Blackheart

billythrilly7th said:
Just Seinfeld/Lowe. Not Brad Pitt.

Of course you don't know your neighbors. Who wants to dogsled two hours for a cup of sugar...

We%20built%20an%20Igloo_B.jpg


:)

taken before i tried to have a sauna in it
 

SpookyWriter

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I want to meet my neighbors so badly that I decided to move and double my monthly rent. My apartment was socialable two years ago, but since Katrina all the misfits and social outcasts moved in.

Really, I am not lying or saying that Katrina displaced people are bad. But our apartment complex is now controlled by the "Housing Authority".

Do I want to meet my neighbors? Not likely. Do I enjoy the drug traffic and higher crime rate? Not likely!

I suppose living in the burbs on Long Island isn't quite the same as an apartment on the east side.

---
Jenna, good for you! I can't imagine your neighbors are sitting on their front porch watching life go by...
 

Forbidden Snowflake

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I don't even know their names. Just say hi when I see them. Which is kinda sad. It's since we moved into this, we are more or less rich and have our own houses, corner.
Before we lived in an apartment in a street with lots of blocks and lots of apartments and all the kids played together in the streets.
 

maestrowork

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My neighbor cuts my grass and clears the snow off my driveway (with a snowblower). He gave me his homegrown vegetables and I gave him Olive Garden certificates.

However, I think the neighbors at the "other" house are terrorists.
 

mkcbunny

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We know everyone in our building, as we're the property managers. But we're on very friendly terms with most of the folks here, and we know a lot of neighbors on the street, as well as others in the wider neighborhood. Sadly, much of this getting-to-know people is due to an increase in crime and our subsequent involvement in Neighborhood Watch and our local crime council. If anyone's been wondering where-in-the-heck I've been in recent weeks, chalk it up to community service. [Oh, and that novel that's demanding my attention.] Why I volunteered time I don't really have is a question I've asked myself on more than one occasion.
 

TwentyFour

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I grew up in my neighborhood, I know people at least fifteen miles away in the other towns! My best friend from 3rd grade and I still chat on the phone for hours at a time. We down her hubby and my bf, then we make plans to dump the kids and get away for a few hours, which never happens. We make fun of the same people we used to in high school since they still live here and have never changed (the old I'm married but can try to seduce your man kind of girls still live here wouldn't you know).

I guess around my town some things never change. It's a funny thing, she has four kids compared to my one, and we still talk like we are 14! I hope it never changes.
 

eldragon

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At our last house, we knew everyone on the entire block, both sides. Our neighbor was a very nice school teacher from New Orleans, adn we all got along great. She was always outside working in her yard.

Across the street were two ivy league college graduates (one from Harvard,) who were newly married. They were very nice but the man (Harvard) ignored us almost completely until Katrina, then we all became good friends. Unfortunately, we moved after that.

Isn't that funny how you always hit it off with the co-worker you never talked to, even though you worked together 10 years, but right before one of you quits? And, likewise with neighbors.

It's like the Cinderella song "Don't know what you got til it gone."


So, where we live now .........we have 5 acres in the country. Our neighbors on one side of us are pure white trash. The grandfather seems cool (a retired taxi driver) but the man is an alcoholic, so we're told ........and his wife or ex-wife depending on the day.......is pretty scary. We don't seem to have much in common, so nobody gets together for tea.


Nobody lives across the street.

LIkewise ...........nobody for quite a distance on the other side. There is one neighbor who is a real "***" though. Literally, he is a donkey. A very cute one, too.
 

Dawno

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I'm getting to know the fellow who rents the other half of the duplex I live in. His vanity plate says "Grog", so I call him Grog in my head and to my SO, but I still don't know his real name. I'll be floored if I find out it's really Grog. I'm tempted to check his mail some time...is that a crime, just to look?

As for the rest of the neighborhood, they stay behind their doors or in their fenced in back yards. The only people we see outside regularly are the young parents walking their kids to the park down the street.

When I was a new mom I lived in a real neighborhood with other new moms and great neighbors. We had street parties on the 4th and an adult Halloween party at one or the other neighbor's home. The gal down the street gave me a baby shower.

Then came the divorce and moves to other cities.
 

GPatten

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She’s someone who most likely knows the value of companionship of friends.

You’ve found someone who can teach and be taught whatever in life each of you may need.

I think we’ve all felt that reach at one time in our life.

Kahlil Gibran:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field, which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
And when he is silent your heart ceases to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is un-acclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Gibran - -
 

BlueTexas

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In the last place I lived, I didn't know any of my neighbors. They all scared me. When we bought a house, almost everyone in the neighborhood is older than us - retired, or has little kids that we frankly don't know what to do with. And the houses on either side have become rentals, so people come and go. But we just got really good neighbors, and I'm happy we know them. Nice neighbors are something you forget about when you haven't had them forever.
 

tjwriter

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I live in a really small town where most of the people have grown up here. I haven't, but everybody says hello to each other and over the past 5 years, I've gotten to know quite a few people. I worked at one of the two gas stations in town and I met a lot of the old folk there. We had new neighbors move in not too long ago and they seem pretty nice, but the old couple that used to live there were great. The neighbors on the other side of us moved a few streets over and we really liked talking to them, too. Of course, everyone's scared of our dogs which is sad because they're mostly sissy-pants.
 
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jenngreenleaf

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Since 1994, I've been really hesitant about making friends with neighbors because I've had to move *so* much. It would seem that, everytime I'd start getting close to someone, I'd have to leave. I gave up. Like so many others in this thread, close connections with neighbors were a wonderful part of growing up . . . so this feeling of having to up-root myself evey six or eight months was very unsettling.

I've been living here for almost two years and I know I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. That feeling of "I'm just going to be moving, anyway," hasn't gone away yet. I've met the people across the street and had dinner with them several times, but we're still "hi, how're you doing?" kind of friends. The people on the other side of them -- we've met part of the family once. I have no idea who else is on this street (the houses are spread out -- old farm neighborhood).

I'll get over this feeling eventually because I'd love for my kids to have the same memories I had when growing up. I know it can't be exactly the same, but I also know it could potentially come close. I'm the only one holding myself back from it all.
 

Azure Skye

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Ugh, don't even get me started. I've lived in this neighborhood for almost five years and I still don't know anyone. I made efforts but it just seems like everyone here is so caught up with their own lives and unless you have kids who play on the same soccer team they don't give you two seconds of their time. Fine by me; we're moving anyway.
:hooray::hooray:
 

cool_st_elizabeth

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I used to live in a 6-unit apartment building in Maryland. I knew everyone there only to say hello to in the hall. Then we bought a house in Buffalo. I would say it's an upper-lower class neighborhood ;-) ... being white, we are in the minority. We know just about everyone. People come around wanting to borrow not only sugar, but eggs, cigarettes, money, etc., and some ask for rides because few of our neighbors have cars. Most are hard-working people who have owned their own homes for many years, but recently several crack smokers have rented apartments on this block ... one of them had her water cut off a few weeks ago, and she goes around stealing buckets of water at night. I would love to catch her trying to steal water from *my* garden hose. Stuff like this sure keeps life interesting.
 

FatTire

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I know my neighbors across the street and next door. I like my neighbors across the street, they are very cool people. But my neighbors next door are very boring and I find myself bored when I try to talk to them. I'd rather watch paint dry.
 

NeuroFizz

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After living in two different backyard-oriented neighborhoods in the Phoenix Valley (very little neighbor interaction), I hit the jackpot when I moved to North Carolina. Here the front porch rocking chair mentality is alive and well, and very pleasant. In our housing development there are perhaps two dozen young children, so every Monday morning the mothers and non-school-age children get together for a play group that rotates between the different houses. Our cul-de-sac has five young children kindergarten-age and under, and all of the families, with children or not, are very social. We have spontaneous child-play gatherings many afternoons, usually on our driveway and front lawn since my son has a diverse collection of lawn toys. The women play some weird dice (drinking) game one evening a month, and the guys get together for poker once a month (tomorrow night, by the way). One family just put their house on the market, and I feel like a group of family members are about to move away.
 

Jaycinth

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Same Psychosis...different day.
I used to work so many hours that I rarely had time to meet my neighbors, but although some parts of my neighborhood are the pitts, the rest of it is gentrifing...kinda. A lot of my neighbors sre living in houses their parents or even grandparents built, and a many of my neighbors are related. My kids know a lot of folks, just from riding on the school busses. The neighbors to my left have kids exactly the same age as mine, and My son has been good friends with their oldest since they bothe peed their pants...we trade grilling and veggies over the fence. The neighbors on the other side just moved in. They're from Jamaica and they have a daughter my girl's age . I know some of my neighbors on sight. One thing we all do is keep an eye on the kids. If I yell for my boy, and he's not out front..then I'll hear another yell inthe distance...(Kind of like the barking dogs on 101 Dalmatians..) and boy will show up announcing how many 'mothers' he had to wave to on his way home..( You know your mother is looking for you.....yes ma'am......."mom... I was only three yells away. . .)
But it wasn't until my cat went missing a few years ago that I really got to know folks....Clyde had made friends with everyone, and because of his tag, they knew him. He was at the Alverez's house eating bacon....
Now there are two new families across the street and an old friend moved into the other house...that was a trip, and I just met the young couple who moved intothe corner house...Shawn and Tiffany, I think. They are my son's age..they just got married, they have a cat named Charlie that keeps escaping to come over to my house and hang out with Clyde and Shadow...

My house is a very very very fine house with 2 cats in the yard.....
 
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