mr rogers said it best when he asked us all to be his neighbor. but, how naïve of us to agree to that before really researching rogers to make sure he would have been a pleasant neighbor. in fact, the more i think about it, the more i can’t picture him delivering brownies to the houses on his street. and i bet he gets really upset when the little neighborhood posse tries to t-p his trees. and does he have plastic flamingos or one of those hedgehog shoe wipes on his front porch?
we had these neighbors growing up – the gerks. we fondly nicknamed them the jerks (and sometimes i called them the geeks, but it wasn’t until i was older and more word-savvy that i realized that nickname wasn’t really applicable. that’s why nobody laughed when i announced it way back when) they hated us. truly. we never ever saw them – i don’t think they ever left their house. until we accidently threw a ball in their yard and tried tiptoeing to get it. then ms. gerk (ps, they looked like the neighbors (the bigheads) on rockos modern life) would come out in her bathrobe and curlers and start screaming at us “what d’ya think you’re doin’? this ain’t no football field!” and we’d run off screaming, without our ball, and then tell ghost stories about it later that night. i think they took our balls to give to their dog, stinky (that maybe wasn’t his real name). stinky was a huge dalmatian chained to a kennel in the backyard. like his owners, he never left. neither did his poop. thus the name. the times when we threw balls into their backyard was the worst. we had a special spot, perfectly out of view of any of their windows, to climb over the fence. it was far enough away from stinky so he wouldn’t eat us. it was living proof of evolution. you had to be quick and sly – if you got caught, you were a goner. only the strong survived.
the point of the walk down memory lane is this – thanks to modern technology (and people with insane amounts of time on their hands), we can now be warned of neighbors like the gerks (and probably mr rogers) before even moving to an area. check this out. you can post comments like “this neighbor sucks” about people – giving as much info as you want (name, address, shoe size) to warn people who might be moving into an area. this could save children’s lives. i don’t know how many kids we lost to stinky. it might also be a funny joke to post something about your friends just to let them know you’re thinking about them.
we had these neighbors growing up – the gerks. we fondly nicknamed them the jerks (and sometimes i called them the geeks, but it wasn’t until i was older and more word-savvy that i realized that nickname wasn’t really applicable. that’s why nobody laughed when i announced it way back when) they hated us. truly. we never ever saw them – i don’t think they ever left their house. until we accidently threw a ball in their yard and tried tiptoeing to get it. then ms. gerk (ps, they looked like the neighbors (the bigheads) on rockos modern life) would come out in her bathrobe and curlers and start screaming at us “what d’ya think you’re doin’? this ain’t no football field!” and we’d run off screaming, without our ball, and then tell ghost stories about it later that night. i think they took our balls to give to their dog, stinky (that maybe wasn’t his real name). stinky was a huge dalmatian chained to a kennel in the backyard. like his owners, he never left. neither did his poop. thus the name. the times when we threw balls into their backyard was the worst. we had a special spot, perfectly out of view of any of their windows, to climb over the fence. it was far enough away from stinky so he wouldn’t eat us. it was living proof of evolution. you had to be quick and sly – if you got caught, you were a goner. only the strong survived.
the point of the walk down memory lane is this – thanks to modern technology (and people with insane amounts of time on their hands), we can now be warned of neighbors like the gerks (and probably mr rogers) before even moving to an area. check this out. you can post comments like “this neighbor sucks” about people – giving as much info as you want (name, address, shoe size) to warn people who might be moving into an area. this could save children’s lives. i don’t know how many kids we lost to stinky. it might also be a funny joke to post something about your friends just to let them know you’re thinking about them.
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