Via text and email I was able to do the unthinkable: assist-contact enough people to constitute a legitimate dinner party. FB friends, there are alternate ways to Create an Event!
While at this social gathering hosted by my gracious friends, the topic of neighbors came up. There were stories of the weird guy from downstairs that seems more like he wants to get invited to the party than complain about how loud it is when he knocks late at night, the crazy lesbians with a treadmill and cookie-baking home business upstairs, and the guy next door with the lady friend who likes to loudly fake her O-face (you know what I'm talking about). I've only ever lived in 5 homes in my lifetime and I must have been lucky because I didn't have any horror stories to share:
- In my childhood apartment, our various neighbors were my friendly babysitters and I loved them all. They were old people who gave me popsicles and took me swimming when my mom had to work, it was bliss. (Sarasota, Florida)
-In my 2nd home, the lady next door smuggled me cigarettes as a teenager and the guy across the street had cute grandsons I got to play and grow up with. The hippy down the block even gave me my first kitten, and he never cared if I came to hang out in his garage with his other cats while he smoked what I didn't know at the time was pot. (Sarasota, Florida)
- My third home was a college apartment complex, but I was never there so I made friends and drank beer with the neighbors at my boyfriend's apartment. We traded stories about classes and asses, there was no reason to leave for another party because a better one was always happening at "1186 in the bricks." (Orlando, Florida)
- Number four was a house I moved to my 3rd year of college and it had an awesome back porch. Those were the days (sigh/tear), of the epic BPPs (Back Porch Parties), when we all talked until the sun came up because everything we said there was important. I was cool with the Mexican neighbors next door, but as soon as I graduated and moved out they reported my remaining roommate and his brother for growing pot out on the awesome back porch. (Orlando, Florida)
- Home five is where I live currently, first two years in a 1 bedroom in the basement and later/now on the 2nd floor in a smaller but sunnier 1 bedroom of the same building. (Astoria, New York)
This brings me to my neighbors here. I can't complain about them at all, and actually I want to brag about them. The patriarch of the family downstairs acts as a Super, so he takes care of the building and is always around to flip the breaker when my simultaneous space-heating, micro-waving, George Foreman-ing, and hair-drying cause an actual blowout. They also have a daughter who practices the clarinet. This started out being cute when I would first hear her stumbling over notes as she learned Away in a Manger, and now is heart-breakingly beautiful because she's graduating to sonatas. The girl that moved into the basement is super cool and gives me my mail when it gets put in her box by mistake. The 2 brothers I share a wall with are the best ever. They carry up my packages and groceries, watch my bunwah if I'm traveling, and have also brought me tea or movies when I'm sick. The secret thing I love most about them though...is when they play music. Sometimes when I go to bed at the right time, I can fall asleep while one of them strums his guitar on the other side of my bedroom wall. He doesn't know that he's playing me into dreams, but it still feels like my very own lullaby.
Now that I think of it, I've somehow manged to make most of my neighbors into my family. Maybe in reality things about my neighbors were/are annoying - but love blinds all that.
Love your neighbor. (this one's for Jesus)
xo
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