Writer's Block: Who's in your neighborhood

[niquildrvr]

How well do you know your next-door neighbors?

Hmm. Well, I know that

• he is a he
• he has a black dog that doesn't like me and scares me sometimes
• he has a son who is apparantly no longer living in the state, which is good because he used to sleep in the room next to mine and play video games into the wee small hours when he was in for a visit
• he

Comments

[marchenland]

My neighbors are a large family of people from, I believe, Kenya. The women and girls all wear long skirts and tunic things, and head wraps, in garish colors. The men dress more typically American. There are at least 2 adult women, 2 adult men, and 5 children -- two pre-teen boys whose names are extremely stereotypical Muslim names, a teenage girl, a pre-teen girl, and a baby of indeterminate gender. The boys ride a gas-powered scooter and play soccer all the time; the girls play sometimes, but mostly they seem to watch the baby. The teenage girl says hi to me; the matron (who is probably my age, but looks so much older) looks at me through haunted but also somewhat haughty eyes. She seems impossibly tall to me. The men don't look at me at all, but talk on their cellphones all the time. They have that amazing blue-black skin that you only see in people straight here from Africa. The women and children are more or a dark chocolate brown. The children speak English very well, but I haven't heard any English out of any of the adults

[niquildrvr]

These sound like interesting people, particularly about the dog thing. I don't like my neighbor's dog, but I wouldn't toss things over a fence at him.

You shouldn't feel guilty about your American-ness. We are all at the point we are in life; they've just come to this country and are, I would assume, in pursuit of their version of American happiness. But what do I know, eh? I've been living in apartments for 20 years.

[lneef]

One set of next-door folks have an obnoxious beagle that roams the neighborhood and poops on our lawn, they won't fix their fence, and they won't cut down the giant haystack plant thing that's at the end of our driveway but half on their property. Their kids are rude.

The other set brought us homemade dinner on our first night home with the baby. Their dog and Lola play together, and when Sean sprained his knee, they had their teenage son cut our lawn.

Can you guess which set we like better?

[niquildrvr]

That second set sounds great. The first set needs an attitude adjustment, eh?

I wonder if there's a correlation between pet and child behavior in families.

[lneef]

That would not surprise me at all. We live in a really redneck neighborhood... it's nice, friendly, but the people are for the most part nothing like us. The neighbors on the one side are different too as they just got back from many years in Japan (he's a Navy nurse).