Good fences make good neighbors

That’s the old New England saying, right? I think it’s true.

I try to be a good neighbor, simply because it was drilled into me from an early age that one must respect other people who are nearby. So while of course my sister and I played in our yard and on the street, if things got too raucous, we were told to cool it. (It helped that we lived on a dead and street where most people had kids.) When we lived in Germany in a third-floor apartment, we were sternly told not to stomp around the apartment, because there were people underneath us who did not want to listen to us banging around. This just seems like common sense to me; treat others as you’d wish to be treated, and respect their space when it’s adjoining yours.

It’s a dying attitude, but one I cling to, because it just seems like the right way to live.

So I am probably going to go ahead and put up privacy fencing along the back of my yard (there’s chain link now) because while Teddy has gotten to know who our neighbors are and generally understands that they belong there, it hasn’t worked with the neighbors over the back fence. The husband was out doing yard work one day, and Teddy ran up and barked, and he and I talked, and Teddy figured it out and does not bark at him. He continues to bark at the wife and little girl, though, probably because when he does it they go back in the house. (See! it worked!)

Which makes me feel really awful; I don’t want some little girl to get a complex about dogs because of Teddy. I don’t want to listen to it, and have to keep running back there after him and telling him “No!” until he calms down. And most of all, it is simply not fair to them to not be able to enjoy their back yard without Teddy barking at them. It’s their yard. Teddy is my dog. Therefore it falls to me to fix the situation. And I think the privacy fence is probably the best bet. Oh well. It costs a pretty penny, but I expected to do it when I moved in, and then decided to leave things neighborly and visible and see how that went; not well, so back to Plan A.

But I thought of that this morning; I was out walking Teddy, and we passed (thank goodness, not on my block) a house where someone had decided that a great way to keep the kids busy at 8 AM on Sunday morning was to put them in the side yard, where they were banding on metal trash cans with sticks and emitting those unearthly howls that only small children can produce.

If I lived next door, I’d be over knocking on the front door asking them (nicely) to shut their fucking rugrats up (not the words I’d use). Because yes, kids make noise; the kids next door to me play outside; that is life. Banging on trash cans at 8 AM is not in the realm of acceptable behavior; that’s when a parent needs to come outside and stop it.

I feel sorry for the people living in the dozen houses in earshot of that place.

It’s a sign of the times, though; the world is a constant reminder that my quaint notions of thinking about the people around you are outdated. And you have the car stereos that you hear well before you can see the car, the people chatting about their yeast infections loudly on cell phones in restaurants, or (as someone recently related to me) someone talking on their phone in the middle of a candlelight memorial service. And while I remind myself that everybody has different definitions of “acceptable,” there are plenty of these things that just don’t fit any definition I can imagine.

So I will shell out the cash and put the fence up, because it’s the right thing to do and everyone will be happier. And hope that I continue to have neighbors with the same sensibilities about these things that I have.