Neighbors

I've lived in the same house for almost 10 years now. It's the longest I've lived in one spot since my childhood home. I lived there for 13 years, 17 if you count the time I kept my stuff there while I went to college.

And we knew all the neighbors. Next door were the Whitlocks. The entire time. Other side: The Hines' & later the McLeans. Across the street were the Graingers and later the Lawyers. The Stokes' were two doors down and the Key's lived across from them. Mr. Key would get bent out of shape if you hit a tennis ball with an aluminum bat and it surprisingly carried the 75 yards from home plate (between our house and the Hines') to his roof. He was by far and away the only neighbor that didn't appreciate a punt from street football that landed in his bushes or flower beds.

But we knew all sorts of stuff like that. We knew the Stokes had a daughter who was a cheerleader for the professional football team in our city--which is all the information about the Stokes' a 12-year-old wants/needs. We knew the Whitlock's kids and their grandkids because they came for lunch on the weekends a lot. Mr. Lawyer actually became a lawyer, which we thought was funny. Dr. McLean liked Kentucky basketball and took us to sports events and his wife was from Cincinnati (none of us had ever heard somebody with such a funny accent). Mr. Hines was always a contender for yard of the month. Mr. Joe lived on the corner across from the Whitlocks and didn't care if we cut through his yard on our way to the Ponds' who lived a block over. Or maybe the Wilson's, who'd moved from England and tried to teach us soccer. This always turned into American football with a soccer ball. I was also a source of pride that Katie Ensey, local high school knockout, lived just down from Stacy Ponds (who we almost killed when me and her brother Scott found a bullet and smacked it with a hammer and it hit the aluminum storm door where she was standing).

We knew our neighbors.

As long as we've lived here, we still don't know our neighbors. Now, I do know Sam across the street. He's retired. He golfs. Whenever we cross paths, like when he checks the mail and I'm doing yard work, we chat. News. Sports. Weather. We chat. He had kids but I'm not sure where they live. The next-door neighbors appear newly married and I know the guy's first name because I made the association with Jason Bourne because we were on our way to see that movie when he introduced himself. I don't know his wife (maybe--they could be living together...I didn't notice a band, but he was doing yardwork, so...) at all. I've seen her a couple of times. We wave at the couple across the street every day but I couldn't tell you their names. Our next door neighbors have cute little girls who we wave to and we chat about once a month. He drives a truck, so we don't see him as much. The family on the corner has a bunch of boys who I only know their names because the parents are always yelling at them to come home or get out of the tree or whatever. A Catholic priest lives across the street, too. Never see him. Our backdoor neighbor is only heard from when it comes time to split cost on a fence or he wants me to trim my Crepe Myrtles so his pool stays clean. Well, that and when he yells at his kids we can hear him. The other folks we share a fence with have a yellow Lab. That's all I've got on them. Oh, yeah. I once chatted with one of their kids in a BB gun incident, but it was all cool.

We just don't know our neighbors. And I was wondering why.

Maybe we're at a busier time of life than all our neighbors? But they're busy, too.
Maybe we all work longer than our parents who all seemed to be home no later than 6PM?
Maybe schools all let out at 3PM and we had more down time?
Maybe we all had chain-link fences that were 4 feet tall and now we all have 6 foot privacy fences?
Maybe we don't let our kids play outside as much so there's less interaction?
Maybe our suburb is more transient in that people move more than they did in Alabama?
Maybe it's architectural in that we have garages on the fronts of our houses rather than porches? I mean, you can enter your home from the garage and there's no place to hang out in front.
Maybe we prefer cacooning when we get home?
Maybe we just don't prioritize knowing them?

I dunno.

What I do know is that I'm much more likely to know more people in the events/causes/schools/churches we're involved with than the 6 people who live around me.

It just seems strange.

It seems different, somehow, than when I was a kid. Even if i