Do you like your neighbours?

I like my neighbors. I’m in a suburban neighborhood, and we all get along pretty well. I’m not close friends with any of them, but we all kind of look out for each other. If someone’s dog gets loose, we try to find it, if a kid falls off a bike, we clean them up, find a Monsters Inc bandaid for them and walk them home.
The cherry tree in my front yard is third base.

@canidmajor Lovely answer thank you. Sounds like an American ideal view.

I think neighborhood security relies on getting to know one’s neighbors. We’ve been in this house for 15 years, as have four or five other families on the block. One house just sold after 35 years (two generations grew up in that house!

At one time there were four houses with eleven kids within a six-year age range. That actually lent itself to interaction by parents as well as other family members.

I do. It’s mostly retired folk who live on our street so it’s usually quiet. They like to give us items they no longer need. They’re sweet.

We have one neighbor with a houseful of younger men who are loud and love to rev the engines of their loud trucks. One truck has cans dangling from the hitch and sports a confederate flag. I don’t like them.

I think American’s are still very much old fashioned in a lot of ways, and it is so nice to read. If it was like that in England, we would think oddly of them. Just how you describe it, I think it wonderful, and wish life was like that here.
Thank you for your posts, really enjoying reading them.

Don’t know them yet, hope so.

I live next to a wetland and my only real neighbor is on my left. They are an Indian family and nice enough but work all the time and are never outside. Just me the birds, coyotes and deer.

Yes, very much. I just moved a few weeks ago and the 2 sets of neighbors here are very nice.

US here. More than half a year is spent in my house in Memphis, Tenn., US. I’ve lived in it for ~20 years. There are only a few neighbors that I’ve met. Most of us keep our distance while being cordial. There is one retired guy at the end of the block who makes it his business to keep tabs on everyone. His intent is good. I finally had to draw the line on when he is over-stepping my boundaries, and it’s working out well.

The other part of the year is spent visiting the SO in Lancashire, UK. Our neighbors there are lovely in their own eccentric ways. There is something charming about how well they keep tabs on each other without being gossipy. Perhaps part of it has to do with having a neighborhood shop.

I don’t know them, but we say hi in the hall.

It’s always good to know who your neighbours are. We have nice people around here and have cordial relations with them.

Yes, I have wonderful neighbors. We’re all friendly, and we watch out for each other, but we don’t invade anyone’s privacy.

Yes, really friendly neighbors. We keep an eye on each others house if they are out of town. I asked one neighbor four houses to help me take a 200 pound item out of my SUV, he came right over.

I am very lucky. One owner has 2 small buildings with 9 total townhouses. We share a courtyard, and we all get together for parties. We take care of each other. I know them all.

Very nice neighbors. The slightly older couple on one side have been very warm and protective of my since I separated. Older woman across the street and some down the block I talk to. Nobody I’m intimate with but one young father will snowblow my sidewald for me when there’s a big storm.

Where I lived a few months ago I did. The people across the hall would kill beers with me for hours on the stoop. We even shared wifi passwords since they had DSL and we had Comcast. If one went down we would just switch. When our hot water heater exploded they gave us their key to their apartment so we could shower until ours got fixed. And we were friendly with the two people in the two units below us.

The place I moved into last month is a bit more spread out. The neighbors are a old couple and I do things like take take their garbage to the curb every Wednesday night and I have mowed their lawn a few times.. But I don’t really have a connection to them like I did to the neighbors in Portland. I just want to help out the old people.

For the most part, no. The people directly across from us are an elderly couple, but they’re religious fanatics and horribly racist on top of it. There’s someone living directly next door who, for years and years, has been the biggest gossip and rumor spreader that I’ve ever encountered. She’s also extremely two-faced.

Then, there’s a very new group of people who moved in something like 4 months ago. And someone they know, one day, opened up our front door (because they were drunk? High? That stupid?), walked past the living room and all the way down the hall calling for her friend, when my sister opened a door and said ”... Can I help you?” and the woman proceeded to run, screaming, out of the house. Weird, but forgivable – even though there was no apology from her or her friends (the new neighbors) which is kind of odd, because you’d figure the new neighbors would want to assure people that it had been an accident and that they didn’t mean anything by it. So we moved on, but cautiously.

Shortly after that, one of our cats had gotten outside late at night, so I went to get her since she’d otherwise be stuck outside all night and wouldn’t deal with it well. She was being stubborn and ran across the street to hide under the religious neighbor’s car, and I followed. As I was approaching their driveway to get my cat, a van came down the street (I live on a dead end cul-de-sac) that I’d never seen before. It drove past me (they had clearly seen me), but turned around and left again. I was immediately on edge, because it was really suspicious behavior, but I let it go since I thought maybe they were lost. After I’d bent down by my neighbor’s car to get my cat, the van came down the street again (but couldn’t see me this time), drove to the end of the cul-de-sac, turned around, but then stopped facing the opposite direction. Completely terrified now, I knew something was about to happen, so I stayed hidden (since, to get home, I would have had to cross directly in front of them). Sure enough 3–4 guys got out, walked back to the dark cul-de-sac and they just stood there staring. Then I heard all kinds of bangs, thuds, and smashing. They completely destroyed the new neighbor’s car, then ran back to the van and sped off. I immediately called the police. And informed them that the woman driving looked identical to the “friend” who had previously walked into our house. So… I don’t really think I’m going to like those neighbors either. :-/

However, there are some residents that seem very friendly and their daughter plays with my niece all the time. I like them… :D

To be honest, I’ve never gone out of my way to befriend my neighbors and have almost no interaction with any of them except for an occasional wave or “Good morning.” I’m not unfriendly—just private.

Like @Pachy I’m not unfriendly, just private, alone, and either at work, inside the house, or mowing the lawn / shoveling the driveway or grilling my dinner. So I don’t spend a lot of time outside (and when I do, my back yard is surrounded by brush, making my yard nearly invisible. (In the winter time when the leaves are all down, I can walk into my back yard and count 17 rooftops and houses to go with ‘em. In the summer time when everything leafs out, I have to peek around some to see my three closest neighbors, and I can’t see all of them at once from any part of the yard.)

But since I’ve lived here for 14 years now, and some of my neighbors have been here even longer than I, I have met most of them, and we’re at least casually friendly. To my north is a gentleman of approximately my own age from Barbados, his girlfriend and occasional family members. We occasionally help each other out with snow removal. Lately I’ve helped him more than the reverse, since his snowblower was stolen several years ago. When I get out my snowblower for snow that’s too deep or heavy to shovel, then I do his driveway and sidewalk, too. On mornings with light snow I’ll often find that he has already shoveled the sidewalk in front of my house. On the worst days of winter as I’m clearing his driveway and he’s clearing the edges, I kid him about why he ever left Barbados. He just shakes his head and smiles. Two years ago after a particularly bad storm he gave me a bottle of Barbadan rum.

To my south is a small townhouse development that is pretty well screened from my house (plus my garage is on that side of the house), so I normally only see them when they’re out on the front deck grilling something delicious, and I tell them so. But that’s really our only interaction.

There are three families across the street, two couples with young children and one couple with no kids. I’m on a nodding-and-waving basis with each of them. A couple of years ago during a heavy snow I cleared both of their driveways and walks, too, because they were away when it was worst, so they were able to come home to a cleared drive. Since then the favor has been returned. That’s one of the nicest ways I’ve seen on a routine basis to say “Welcome home, neighbor.” I’ll definitely have to keep that up.

Other than that, I’ve returned a lot of mail around the neighborhood to rightful addressees. I think the Postal Service must be hiring the blind, sometimes. And I just got back inside from clearing the immediate neighborhood of the various trash items that find their way to this low point in the road after a rain.

I would rather be “the neighbor everyone likes” – without bending over unnecessarily for that – than feel like I have to like everyone. But it seems that the more likeable I am, the more I like them, too.

I’ve also lived at times in neighborhoods like @DrasticDreamer,‘s so I can certainly sympathize.

Nice post, @CWOTUS, and good to know I’m not alone in my preferred alone-ness.

Thank goodness I do have lovely memories of small-town neighborhoods I grew up in, when most homeowners kept their doors unlocked, kids played freely and happily afternoon and in the yards and streets at all hours, fireflies were plentiful at dusk, and everybody seemed to know and like and trust everybody else. But alas, I’m much older now, more private, and yes, more wary—and that sense of neighborliness, at least in my neighborhood, just doesn’t seem to exist.

Good fences make good neighboors. Places I’ve lived I found it best to have no relationship with a neighbor. I can make small talk occasionally, but my home is my castle. I want to be safe, and comfortable at home. I hear the thumping music, or loud talking (maybe a fight) , the couple next door fighting, the baby crying, the dog barking, the sirens, the landlord trying to break in, or someone trying to convince me to accept Jesus. If someone wants to be a good neighbor, they need to leave me alone, and let me tolerate our living conditions on my own. If I feel social, I’ll go somewhere to hang out, or call someone I know over. Neighbors break stuff, borrow money, peep through windows, steal, wake me up, almost burn the apartment complex down, shoot at each other, get raided by the SWAT team, complain etc. Wish I lived in a house with 10 ft high brick walls around it. Security gate , and all.

No. I used to be very close to my neighbors as a child. I had many friends, both kids and adults. I would play with the kids whenever I had free time and the adults would sometimes approach me and talk. I even visited houses of several kids. Now my neighbors are complete strangers. Most of the old kids have moved away, replacing by distant people who never want to talk to me. My neighbors are getting meaner and more asshole-like too. I have a woman who constantly boasts about how great her son is (the son is unfortunately an old friend of mine who became distant as he grew up), a group of men who constantly gather for alcohol in front of my house and talk loudly, a man who smoke wherever he can… I miss the old neighborhood. I can’t do anything to create a good relationship though. I’m getting busier, and I don’t like some people either. Now I have a feeling everyone lives in their own world.

I do not know most of my neighbors.

The ones on the East side moved in a couple of years before we did, and our children more or less grew up together. I babysat them.

The parents divorced and the children turned out to have a lot of social problems. We parted ways when I paid one of them to take care of my dog while we went on vacation and she allowed her boyfriend to come in a ransack my home. They stole everything they thought was valuable.

The daughter became pregnant at age 15. She now has three children with NO fathers around. There are several unrelated people living there. We have very little contact.

The only other permanent neighbors live directly across the street, and when their son moved away, we also lost contact.

The rest of the houses on our street are rentals, and seldom have tenants longer than a few months.

Unfortunately, no. We tend to mind our own business all the time. As I live in an area populated by Muslims there will be always forced excepted tolerance from the community toward minority groups. They make loud public prayers very early in the morning and evening, playing extremely loud and endless fireworks in the middle of the night for days during Ramadhan, publicly (and angrily) announcing to people that eateries should be closed during fasting time even though not all the eateries belong to the Muslims, etc. When I once live in Chinese community, equal to China town, people like to make noises by kareoking anytime they want. I hate loud noises but I guess there will always be troublematic neighbors wherever we live.

Some I’m friendly with, some I barely know and some I wave to but otherwise don’t interact with much. I live in a small community that used to be a summer community, so there are occasional parties in a beach area and in the colder months, in a communal building (Christmas party, autumn party). The people in the community are very nice people but because I’m at work a lot and not around much, I don’t know them too well and don’t see them except at the parties.

I am pretty fond of most of my neighbours. We’re very much a neighbourhood of immigrants of different generations. Many continents, many countries, many cultures represented here. I love the neighbourhood and love chatting with neighbours when I see them.

Today was a great neighbour love day.

Took the little girl dog out for a w.a.l.k – she loved up/was loved up by neighbours in 3 houses.

Early afternoon, a neighbour put out about 50 books on his lawn. I sent Setanta over to pick first, then I went, then I sent our neighbour Gary, then we sent our neighbour Daddy. We all agreed to swap what we picked once we were done with our selections. After that, they’ll go into our block’s free library.

While I was out swimming, Setanta and the little dog were visited by some of the little humans in the next couple of houses.

When I got back, I was in the kitchen when I heard Setanta. One of the little humans was at the front door – her Dad (who owns an amazing French Japanese bakery) had sent over a couple of great desserts.

Later I took the little dog out for a w.a.l.k. We met another neighbour and her old dog and w.a.l.k.e.d together for about an hour.

Added to the happiness of running into one of my favourite lifeguards while I was at the pool, it was a good day to be in our neighbourhood.

@BellaB Sounds like you live in an amazing place. That’s really, really cool. :)

@DrasticDreamer , I feel very lucky to live in this neighbourhood. We’re in a nice community on the edge of downtown Toronto. Sometimes I can’t believe the condos haven’t over-run us yet.

We’re minutes from the beach, and half an hour or a bit more from a huge variety of world-class cultural activities. We can walk to get Thai take-out, and kids can still ride bikes and skateboard on our block.

Our Canada Day parade was completely old-fashioned with all the best hipsters mixing with old Babas and Nonnas to watch.