Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I was reading my bookmarked blogs today and one got me thinking, Jen at People I Want To Punch In The Throat did a post about neighbors and that got me thinking about mine.

I have three immediate neighbors and three "outskirt neighbors".  In other words my house is in between two other houses and I have a house across the street and the outskirt neighbors are the houses that are next to those houses...make sense?  Yeah I just confused the shit out of me too....but it doesn't matter because I want to tell you about our immediate neighbors.

I actually couldn't ask for better neighbors, they are quiet, friendly and very helpful.  The neighbor to left of me (looking out my front door) is a retired Army Ranger who builds custom furniture and his wife who works at the town library.  Both of them are very nice people always helping out and letting the kids play in their yard but he is VERY conservative and outspoken.  I came home one day from work last year to find this handmade sign in his yard.

Yes, this is my neighbor's yard and yes, that is my house in the background.

The neighbor to the right of my house (again looking out the front door) owns a concrete yard, runs a day care and has tow kids who are great.  The kids come over all the time to play and the husband helps me move big ass boulders that I was dumb enough to try to remove myself.  The wife and my wife have become really good friends.  The only issue I have ever had with them was there was this phase the husband was going through building picnic tables to sell.  We sleep with the windows open until it becomes that "holy fuck I am sweating my balls off" hot here in New England.  Well he thought it would be a dandy idea to build these things from midnight to 3:00 AM a few nights in a row....yeah, not so impressed.  BUT!  That was the only major issue we have had in six years of living here.

Now the real reason for this post is the neighbor across the street.  We have a pair of retired school janitors who keep completely to themselves. 

Fuck you flamingos!

They never bother anyone and it is amusing to see him practicing his golf skills in the backyard.  They have the pink flamingos and garden gnomes.  The bird feeders and the sun deck.  They always support our Cub Scout Pack and are just genuinely nice people.  Of course they are moving...

They are up there in age so they figure a nice elderly housing unit would be best for them, which makes sense and I wish them the best...but what about me?  Who is going to buy their house?  What are our new neighbors going to be like?  I've never had to worry about this before now.  When we got married we moved one town over to a rental house where the only neighbors were the pothead caretaker that lived in the trailer next to our other neighbors, who were all dead.  Then we moved in with my parents to save money, lived in a couple of apartments and then we are where we are now.

Now I am faced with the anxiety of wondering who the new neighbors will be...

TK-421 do you copy?

What if they are porn film makers like in PIWTPITT?  That would be awkward...the house is a small house with many windows.  I mean if this was fifteen years ago and I was still single I would be saving hundreds of dollars by grabbing a bag of microwave popcorn and watching the show across the street, but now with a wife and three boys it would be awkward...if I got caught...

Well I suppose it could be worse....

What if they are circus clowns?  I rarely use the word hate, but I HATE clowns.  They creep the shit out of me.  I don't even want to imagine waking up for work and while taking the dog out looking across the street and seeing some freakazoid in red hair and makeup wearing a wife beater and plaid shorts mowing the lawn.  Fucking Flippo.

...like this.  Brother and sister?

What if they are white trash?  Not that I have anything against the people from the Mos Eisley Cantina but I have noticed that the outskirt houses are turning slightly white trashy.  The neighbors now have a very nice kept yard, nice cars, and the house looks nice.  We had an outskirt neighbor who had a house that looked like something out of Candy Land down the road, it was cute (so my wife says).  They moved out and in moved the castaways from Mos Eisley...you know the scum and villainy?  The house and yard went from Candy Land to Borderlands.  I don't want to wake up and see three Jeeps up on blocks, a big ugly mutt chained to a tree and the kids running around in diapers at the age of four.  No offense to any white trash readers of mine, you're cool with me, just don't be my neighbor.

My only hope is that they are either another retired couple, a newly married couple looking for their first home and want to raise a nice kid or George Lucas.  Time will tell I guess, we received a letter in the mail yesterday asking for references and of course we gave good ones.  I am sure the house won't sell right away...right?  Please tell me I'm right...

By the way, I want to point out that there is a difference between redneck and white trash...

Like I've always said...we solve problems.

This is a problem....