Anti-Social Behavior

I was reading the last couple of posts over at Jennifer’s place and it made me think of how totally un-neighborly I am. My thoughts were then reinforced by something that happened last weekend.

I was over at Morton’s having a steak dinner in the bar. I tend to eat in the bar when I am alone. It is a little more socially accepted and doesn’t make you seem too much like a loser. I had finished my dinner and was enjoying my favorite aperitif when a man came in and sat down two stools away from me. He lit up a cigar and ordered some Basil Hadens. I began to speak to him and we came to realize that we lived in the same building. Then we realized we lived on the same floor. Then we realized that we were my next door neighbors. Yep I have been here a few months now and I have never seen nor heard him. It took a chance meeting at the bar for us to begin talking.

Now some of you are probably thinking that not knowing your neighbors after a few months in a condo is alright. Well, listen to this one. While living in the suburbs in Dallas with my ex and working for a start up company, I got to talking with one of my coworkers before a meeting one day. We had been working together for about a year and we were just chatting about insignificant stuff…the weather, where we live etc. The end of the conversation went like this.

Me: “Where do you live?”
Him: “Frisco.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I live in Preston Trails.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I live on Amber Valley.”
Me: “Me too.”
Him: “I live at 11300.”
Me: “I live at 11200. That is like 4 doors away. How long have you lived there?”
Him: “About a year. Oh, you must be the only people on the block that we don’t know.”

Yep, worked with a guy for a year, lived four houses away and never knew it.

Don’t get me wrong, we knew some of our neighbors. OK, we knew the ones that lived right next door to us. We sort of had to. My rabbit would escape to their yard and we would have to get him back. We knew the neighbors on the other side because child insisted on playing in the alley between our houses and throwing a ball against MY fence until I was annoyed enough to go make him stop. Yep, I am a great neighbor.

It is not that my ex and I wanted to be un-neighborly. It is just when you live in the suburbs, you are surrounded by families. And we were no different. I think only my coworker and us did not have children on our entire block. So even when we did try and go to the neighborhood functions, it was just a bunch of kids running around screaming and being annoying – OK it was probably fun for them, but it was amusement park hell for me.

Maybe we are just antisocial. I mean look where we are now. She lives on an isolated 5 acre piece of land with only three neighbors and they aren’t close. I have tried to live the city life where it is perfectly acceptable to spend your entire life and never get to know anyone. All you need to do is occasionally nod at you neighbors in the halls and give them an ingenious “what’s up?”