Dear neighbors…

(…who would know this blog existed if you ever bothered to come talk to us…)

We are not obligated to go ’round the neighborhood introducing ourselves and presenting ourselves for your approval as The Right Kind of People. Not when we moved in five years ago. Not now.

It’s yours. Your obligation to come to us to find out who we are. Until you do that, your judgments about us are your problem, not ours.

If you had come to our door, you might have realized we are quiet, well-educated and well-traveled people who live our lives with honor and dignity. The county government and police department have, fortunately, already realized this, thanks to your meddling.

You will not take that dignity and quiet away from us because you hate that your 40-year neighbor died and we bought her house. You will not take that dignity and quiet away from us because you hate that the neighborhood demographic changed nearly overnight from the nearly dead to the newly hatched. You will not take that dignity and quiet away from us because we don’t spend 24/7 working on our lawns because we’re too busy working on improving the whole of our lives.

We pay the same taxes you do, even though we don’t make as much money as you made when you were working, and you are now retired on the Social Security we are paying. You can judge us and co-opt our children when you start paying our mortgage, for the infrastructure repairs you can’t see on this 45-year-old house, and for someone to keep our lawn for us.

If our biggest sins are that we keep to ourselves, we’re quiet, and we let our tax deductions have a bit more physical freedom than you deem is proper, and we don’t have as much money or free time as you do, we can live with that.

No, we aren’t The Right Kind of People. And if you are, then we don’t want to be.

And oh, P.S. We don’t need to be friends with you. We need you to mind your own business.

14 thoughts on “Dear neighbors…

  • November 24, 2010 at 2:53 pm
    Permalink

    Much. I’ve been stewing about this for a while, after a conversation with a neighbor who was very kind, but made it clear that we should’ve gone around the neighborhood and introduced ourselves.

    Ironically, the kid we let have so much freedom is the one who’s lessened any MORE drama because the more reasonable neighbors figure if we raised such an awesome child, we must not be too bad.

    Reply
  • November 24, 2010 at 3:07 pm
    Permalink

    Time to sic ’em

    Reply
  • November 24, 2010 at 3:12 pm
    Permalink

    Eh, screw them. You’re my kind of people. *hugs* Hopefully that’s enough. 😀

    Reply
  • Pingback: Tweets that mention Dear neighbors… | Moriah Jovan -- Topsy.com

  • November 24, 2010 at 4:28 pm
    Permalink

    Dude says “Well said”. Dude would make one small change. Mind your own DAMN business!

    Reply
  • December 3, 2010 at 7:44 pm
    Permalink

    we should’ve gone around the neighborhood and introduced ourselves

    May not have made a difference. Didn’t for us 17 years ago when we moved into the neighborhood from hell. It got too much and we moved five years later. We’ve since discovered that our neighbors really were out to get us. Fortunately, child protective services and the police never acted on the bogus claims. (The irony is that children of the two worse offenders have grown up to be felons and drug addicts.)

    Reply
  • December 3, 2010 at 10:27 pm
    Permalink

    We’re bracing ourselves for a visit from CPS. Just because that’s the natural followup to the city permits department and then the police department. Lemme tell you…neither were amused at what they *actually* found. Which was…nothing.

    Not only that, but only a couple of them have any idea I work at home (and those ones don’t understand what I do). They think I’m Peg Bundy.

    Reply
  • December 4, 2010 at 1:07 am
    Permalink

    They should be lucky you don’t turn Gemma Teller on them!

    Reply
  • December 11, 2010 at 7:02 pm
    Permalink

    Damn, I could have written this–except our snotty neighbors are our age. If it weren’t for the housing market, we’d be seriously thinking of moving.

    Reply
  • December 11, 2010 at 9:34 pm
    Permalink

    I guess I can just take comfort in the fact that mine’ll die faster… :/

    Reply
  • December 12, 2010 at 8:54 am
    Permalink

    Dude hopes they don’t hold on as long as Ole Rosie.

    Reply
  • December 30, 2010 at 11:02 pm
    Permalink

    This is a great argument for living out in the country. People suck. Why can’t everybody just mind their own business and leave others alone?

    Reply
  • January 10, 2011 at 1:37 pm
    Permalink

    You live in my old neighborhood, apparently?

    That man mowed three times a WEEK. Sometimes four. And he blew the grass off his driveway with a leafblower at 7am. And he used a shop vac to suck up all the pine tree tidbits.

    I let my kids run naked through the sprinkler and let my chickens escape once in a while when I was bored.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to MoJo Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *