2. If you see your neighbor out of the corner of your eye, look away quickly. Or better yet, look away and turn around. Pretend you didn’t see your neighbor. That is the best way to ignore that person who is your neighbor. If you hear a squeak, it is from the rusty hinges of your neighbor's back door. One of them might be coming outside. Pretend you don’t see that person, and look away.
3. Duck and pretend. Pretense is your best weapon against your neighbor. Pretend you didn’t hear your neighbor's greeting. Neighbors should be heard but not seen if one can help it. And seen but not heard. Or, better yet, both. Neighbors are in reality less that thirty feet away, but it should feel more like a thousand.
4. Sometimes contact with that thing called a neighbor will be unavoidable. Be sure to seem as if you want to break away and cut off the conversation quickly and politely. Explain that you have somewhere else to go, or something else to do.
5. The mailman might deliver your neighbor’s mail to your house by mistake. This is unfortunate. Place it, later on, in your neighbor's mailbox discreetly. Again, the main objective is to avoid contact with your neighbor. If, while you are doing so you hear something stirring behind your neighbor's front door, quickly tiptoe back to your own yard.
6. A Neighbor might show up at a funeral. Tell them that it was awfully nice of them to do so.
7. The best time to meet and greet your neighbor is on moving day. Then you can be frank. There will be no commitments and you can have a long talk with your neighbor about what a shame it was that you didn’t have the time to get to know one another sooner, and about how much of a shame it is that it is only until now that we have finally met, and how many of the same people we possibly know and how much there is in common.
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Anyway, I will be lost for a while. With Arthur Conan Doyle. Will be back when I get back.
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