Neighbors: Love Them or Hate Them, But Get Along with Them
When you move into a house, you generally inspect the plumbing, check the roof and look for termites, but, in most cases you have no idea who your neighbors are. You might be lucky and get the kind who bring over a home cooked meal your first night there, want to be surrogate grandparents to your kids and are the "live and let live" type of people.
Then there's the other side of the coin: the neighbors from hell. They come in many varieties. They call the police when you play your music too loud, call the dog warden the first time your dog sets foot (or paw) on their property and think no one can park in front of their house but them. On the other hand, maybe you are the neighbors from hell. You complain when their tree grows a foot over the property line, think they shouldn't mow the lawn on your day off and think children should be seen and not heard. Like it or not, you may be neighbors for years to come. They're like family....you might not like them, but they're not going away, so it may be best to call a truce and make life more peaceful for all of you.
I recently spent some time with friends who lived on a mountain in the middle of nowhere in Montana. The nearest homes could barely be seen through the treetops three hairpin turns down the mountain. We walked to the upper neighbors home, but not without our sixteen inch tall can of bear mace. I thought, "Boy, when you live out here you don't have to know or see any of your neighbors." My friend soon set me straight on that. He said "Are you kidding me? These guys are my posse. If there's a fire, the fire department may take 45 minutes to get here. My neighbors will be the ones to help me put out the fire. If I get stuck in a snow drift, there's no AAA. I call a neighbor to pull me out with his truck".
The moral of the story is, no matter where we live, we all have posses. That neighbor you don't like may be the one banging on your door when he sees your house on fire in the middle of the night. Your neighbor might be the only one who notices you haven't picked up the morning paper and finds you lying on the floor after a heart attack. Love them or hate them, but get along with them. It's not only the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do.
