The Good The Bad And Me

There are good neighbors and there are bad neighbors. Hopefully in all of our lives, the good outweigh the bad.

We have been lucky to have a few good neighbors. Our neighbor immediately next door has been VERY good to us, letting us hook up to his water when we moved in when I was too stupid to know I had to go to the water department and have the water turned on. They have been great to us since day one and I am truly thankful that we are lucky enough to have them as neighbors. Most of the rest of the neighbors around us are nice and we are on first name basis with all of them. They are the neighbors that will stand and chat with you when you're outside, or will wave as they are coming or going. Yes, our immediate neighbors have been nice.

Except for the red house across the street.

We've lived here three years and to honest, I thought only teenagers lived there. (These are the teenagers who believe they have the right to play in OUR yard!) I don't think I've ever seen an adult there. Until recently.

The dad came knocking on our door about a month ago. Keep in mind, in three years we have never as much as gotten a wave hello, a nod or even the finger from this guy. I didn't even recognize him as a neighbor. He came knocking on our door at 10:00 on a Friday night, when there were no lights on in the house, and he's down there banging away until we answered. What did he want? Money. Can you believe it? To have the balls to knock on a dark house of people you have NEVER spoken to, just to ask for money. We found out that Ron is a better person than I am since I'd have kicked the guy to the curb.

The next Friday night, the same thing happened. He knocks on the door of a dark house, again, almost 10:00 at night and now gives Ron some sob story of him being out of food in the house and he really needs money.

I really had problems with this one. Every church in the neighborhood has a food bank. He could have gone to any one of them, asked for food and been helped out. No. He waits until 10:00 to knock on OUR door to ask for another hand out. Once again, Ron is a better person than I am.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in charity. We support quite a few local and national charities. If it had been any of my neighbors who are neighborly and actually give us the time of day, or a nod or a wave or even, dare I say it, say HELLO to us, I'd have gladly helped out any one of them that told me they were having a hard time. But for someone who has never as much as flipped me the bird to ask for money to me is beyond chutzpah.

So that's the bad neighbor.

Believe it or not, the good neighbor then came knocking on the door a few weeks later. He actually lives on the cross street a block to the south of us. He told Ron that he is a painter and he was currently between jobs and needed money. He saw that our three dormers on the house needed painted (BOY did they need painted!) and he told Ron he'd paint them for a price. The price was very reasonable and he was hired on the spot! Then Ron got to work negotiating even more jobs that needed done that we haven't had time to do.

Not only do our dormers look awesome, our front porch floor has finally been painted! That's been on our list of things to do since the day we moved in to the house! And, the garage was scraped, primed and painted and I'm tickled pink over here.

Not only did we put him to work, we helped him find more work. Right now he's working on our next door neighbor's garage and his next job is for our friend Larry. The guy is very good and very reasonable.

I have a lot of respect for this man. He didn't come knocking on a stranger's door asking for a hand out. He asked for work. I can sure never fault anyone for that. You can be sure any time this man knocks on our door again, we will always help him in whatever way we can.