Friendly Neighborhood Moment

I’ve been in my house for about a year and up until recently, contact with my neighbors had been extremely minimal. I had waved to them, said “hello” in passing, and even nodded in their direction while mowing my lawn. That’s really all I felt was required of me. It’s a lot of work to stop and get to know a complete stranger. Sure it starts all innocent but next thing you know they’re expecting you to pick up their mail while on vacation or to notify the police if you see them being shot at. Bah! Who do they think I am, some kind of magical helper monkey?

But in all actuality, it pays to have good neighbors. Last week, one of my neighbors saw me struggling with my sprinkler system and decided to trot on over to help me fix it. Despite the fact I hadn’t spoken more than three words to him ever before, he seemed very eager to help me. When neither of us could figure out the problem, I told him that I’d just call a friend and not to worry about it. I moved on to another project (changing the pads on my swamp cooler). Next thing I know, my neighbor is yelling up at me while I’m on the roof. I walk to the edge, peer down and see that he has invited yet another neighbor to work on the problem. Suddenly they’re suctioning debris out of my pipe and fixing the valve. Boom, my sprinklers come on. Problem solved. How nice is that? So now I’m going to help one of them install some software on his computer. We figure it’s a good exchange of favors, since he’s computer illiterate and I’m pretty much house-maintenance illiterate.

Plus, I found out all kinds of interesting things about my block: how three houses had recently been repossessed; how our former neighbors across the street were busted for having a meth lab in the basement and carted off to prison. Suddenly the neighborhood became a lot more interesting.

Mr. Rogers was right, all along.