There’s a special moment in every homeowner’s life where his neighbor emerges from his garage that directly faces yours, and you think:
“How have I lived here three goddamn years and never seen this person before?”
In my little cluster of townhomes, there are like 64 different residents, and I know maybe four of them. Modern living is bizarre. I have 276 Facebook friends, 245 Twitter followers, and 265 LinkedIn connections, yet I don’t know the people who live next to me. Not really, anyway.
The guy I know best is Sully, who lives two places down. He’s retired and smokes a shitload. Nice guy, but will snare you in conversation you’re only always sort of ready for. He admired the “titty cave” we created out of nudie magazine photos in our garage for Clayton’s bachelor party.
Then there’s Carla, who’s president of our HOA. She lives with her lesbian life partner, and every so often they have parties where it seems like roughly half the lesbians in the city come over. My patriarchy-representing ass is always uncomfortable over there, but Kristin seems to do just fine. Imagine that. The lesbians down the way love my hot wife.
This is where it gets muddy. The couple who lives next to me is very nice, but I couldn’t tell you either of their names for a billion dollars. They even watered our plants on our front stoop when both Kristin and I were too stupid to remember. I’m pretty sure this qualifies me as an asshole.
Guy Who Works at Local Channel 8 is a couple places down. Middle-Aged White Woman Who Is Wary of the Black Folks Across the Street is across from him. At one point there was a guy named Shea who lived here who I haven’t seen in awhile. Assistant Colorado Rapids Coach and His Hot Wife moved out after the old Rapids coach got fired. Hot Woman Also Named Kristin lived there before. Guy Who Sorta Looks Like Jerry Sandusky lives there now.
Heading around the horn, we’ve got Couple Who Leaves Their Garage Door Open All the Time, Democrat Couple with the Dogs Who Leaves Their Garage Door Open All the Time, Gardening Lady, Dude with CSU Flag, Smoking Johnson & Wales Students with Inexplicable Corvette and Audi, Grilling Black Dude Who I Saw Once, Latino Couple Who Stares at Me In My Car, and finally New Guy (or, alternately, Good-Looking Greasy Guy Selling His Motorcycle).
I wonder how they refer to me. They probably all know my name, and I’m just the self-involved shitheel. In fact, that’ll be how I introduce myself at the next HOA meeting.
Hi, I’m Self-Involved Shitheel. It’s good to see you again, Couple with the Annoying Kids Who Play Soccer in the Street. Oh, who am I kidding, I’m never going to the HOA meetings.
This makes me laugh. I could write something similar. I know all of my neighbors who have dogs. That’s about it.
We used to call one of our neighbors “White Trash Family.” Then we got to know them better and realized that they aren’t so much white trash as just “Don’t Control Their Teenage Kids So There is Constantly 4 Cars Parked in the Street Family.” We’ve come to learn the real “White Trash People” live right next door. 2 other thoughts on this: As soon as I learn a neighbor’s name, I immediately go in the house and add the name(s) to the little note pad drawing of the proximal houses so I can reference later when needed because my memory is crap. Coincidentally, we have 2 Rons that live next door to each other and two Marks that live next door to each other too, so that helps with the remembering. Either that or I screwed up labeling the drawing. My other thought is that we met several of our neighbors when pieces of my fence blew down at various times. There’s no better time to get to know your neighbors than when they ring your doorbell at 8pm and say, “Hey, part of your fence is in the street, do you want me to help you move it?”