We’re VERY new to the neighbor stuff. We don’t know a lot of people here, and are unsure of how the whole having-neighbors-thing works. We’re used to living in the city, where you ignore everyone and pretend that they don’t exist. In the suburbs, it’s not like that. People are nice. They say hello.  They look out their windows to see what you are up to. And now, we look out of OUR windows to see what THEY are up to.

Before a recent trip, we decided to leave a note for our neighbor with a request to please call us if the house burned down, or got hit by a tornado, or squashed by the foot of Godzilla.

I left a friendly note in their mailbox, and right before we left, saw our neighbor out on his front step.

“Hey there,” I said “I left a note in your mailbox. We’re going out of town for a few days, would you mind keeping an eye on our house for us?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on that house for 20 years” he said.

I didn’t really know how to take that.