Neighbors

I just got off the phone with old neighbors of mine. We are getting together for lunch before I fly away.

We were only neighbors for a little more than a year. But during that short time we became friends. They attended Norah’s graduation party. He was interviewed by Hannah for a school project. He is the inventor of the silicon wafer. If I called him because I saw a rat or had an overflowing anything he was over in less than a second.

He is an older Scottish fellow and we hit it off from the very beginning. I was having a look at the outside of the house we would soon be leasing. My brother-in-law was visiting at the time so I had him in tow.

My soon to be new neighbor was poking around the sprinkler in the lawn between the two houses.

He looked up and said, “Don’t mind me. I’m only checking on this. Not checking on you.”

I replied, “Yeah, right, sure you’re not.”

And we both chuckled.

I introduced myself and my brother-in-law and said that he was visiting from Syria. The neighbor said some welcoming things to him, then looked at me and said, “Well, you’re not.”

I said, “Not what?”

He replied, “From Syria.”

So, we ended up chatting about this and that. His wife was half Irish and half Scottish. He invited us to his back deck so we could see the view from there. My brother-in-law couldn’t believe the immediate friendly interaction.

A month later we moved into the new home and we were back and forth between their house and ours. If either one of us were in the yard we would yell out to each other.

They were good humored and could always get a chuckle out of me.

One afternoon I saw him with some of his Scottish friends on the deck and I said to them, “Lordy, is it happy hour already?”

They yelled down, “It is! But since we’re Scottish it’s happy minute!”

Or the time his wife told me that while visiting Ireland they were on a bus with “no smoking” signs plastered everywhere. But there was one Irish fellow having a cigarette just the same.

Someone says to him, “Can’t you see there’s no smoking allowed inside the bus?”

And the Irish lad looks at them incredulously and replied, “Sure, and can’t you see I’m blowing it out the window?”

Anyway, you can see I enjoyed them. As I have enjoyed most neighbors I have had through the years.

Back to the present. I asked them how they liked their new neighbors. They told me that they never see them. And when they do there is hardly a wave or even a smile. Never been in the house and never even met the lady of the house.

And I thought that was just too bad. I understand that not all neighbors will be friends. But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be good neighbors.

But how would you know unless you got to know them? Just a little. Those new folks don’t know what they’re missing.