A Tight-Knit(ting) Community

What are people thinking? Is everyone ultra-civic minded...or ultra nosy? In my neighborhood, the latter, unfortunately, is true. I live in a small community of seniors who have little better to do than rush to the window at the sound of a car slowing on the street. In fact, I have sneezed inside my kitchen...and had the neighbor call 'Bless you!' from his driveway! I have the only small children on my block. I yell sometimes, though my bark is far worse than my non-existent bite. I know my neighbors can hear me at times, and I am unapologetic for my lack of patience. Perhaps it doesn't bode well for the moments they have had to knock on my door to return my toddler who has dashed out into the driveway during the ten seconds I was in the bathroom. However, it isn't my parenting that is in question here!

Here are another couple of examples. A neighbor had a roof replaced by a crew of older workers who did a great job. Four different calls were made to ensure that someone came by to make sure the permits were in order. We had a trailer parked in our driveway for a couple of months after the hurricanes, and one of our neighbors took it upon himself to drive out of his way on his last day as a part-time seasonal resident, to complain about it to the trustees of our development! We hadn't even met him yet! It's not as though we had the hulk of a rusting car up on blocks in our yard. Au contraire! I planted flowers this year. Another neighbor commented that she thought we must have company since there was a new van parked in our driveway. We pulled in at midnight, with the new van we'd bought, and I talked to her in the early morning of the next day.

Today I had to laugh out loud at well-meaning strangers. At lunchtime, my husband popped out to his car for a quick nap in the parking lot at work. If you know our lifestyle with small children and him working two jobs, you understand. I've napped in the car many times, even just while out on errands! So there he is, in the sun, the door propped open to catch a breeze, the windows up, and enjoying a doze in the sun-dappled interior of his little Geo-metro convertible. Several minutes into his nap he is awakened by the screeching of brakes as an ambulance pulls to a hurried stop next to the car.

Blinking in the sunlight groggily and trying to get his tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth, he realizes they are there for him. Someone, in passing, has seen him in the car and called in a 'dead body' in the parking lot! The paramedics are rolling their eyes too...but remind him of the picture he presented with his head lolling gently to the side, his mouth open, head back, tongue and jaw slack. If you were driving by, or peeking from between dusty venetian blinds, of course you wouldn't hear the booming snores that always accompany any sleep my husband enjoys. It's not as though someone was concerned enough to honk a few times, or stop by the car and yell, "Hey buddy, are you dead?!"

Let's just call 911 for an ambulance to rush to the scene of a middle-aged man with fifteen precious minutes to power-nap before heading back to his fluorescent lighted cubicle. It's not as though, with an aging population and demographic of mainly geriatric residents in our city, the paramedics might have some strokes, heart attacks or aneurysms to attend to.

Thank goodness for all our neighbors with their good intentions. I never have to worry about anyone stealing my rusty garden tools, my battered mini-van, or creeping surreptitiously around my house. I don't have to worry about my teens sneaking out at night, or my husband seeing someone on the side. (Like he'd have the time or energy!) I don't have to be concerned that after a year of living with a tarp on the roof, my contractor might not have a permit to fix my leaking ceilings. I can heave a sigh of relief that no visitors will make it to my front door unnoticed. Fortunately, I can also put to rest my irrational fear of having a heart attack in my vehicle during a short nap and not being discovered. The world is, indeed, a safer place.