Won't You Be My Neighbor

Now that I have you singing Mr. Rogers' theme song, let me take this opportunity to talk to you about neighbors.  Now I don't know how things were in the "old" days, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that neighbor-to-neighbor relationships have changed over the last, oh, forty years or so.  I would imagine there was a time when neighbors would greet each other as they went outside to get the morning paper.  I bet there were times when neighbors would chat over the fence and catch up on such things as little Johnny's baseball game and little Emma's loose tooth.  There was probably even a time when a neighbor might knock on a door to ask to borrow an egg.  I'm sure these things still happen, right? 

On to my point...one of our neighbors was expecting their second child.  I couldn't remember when the baby was due, but when I saw that they were gone last weekend, I highly suspected the baby had come.  Two nights ago my family and I were sitting around our dining room table, and I noticed a car pull up at our neighbors' house.  A woman got out carrying a sack.  "Aha!" I thought.  "I bet she's bringing a baby gift." 

Being the nosy neighbor that I am, I darted over to the window to watch.  Sure enough, I saw my neighbor walking through the living room carrying a baby.  Chip responded, "Well, they could have at least told us they had their baby."  I replied, "Well, we didn't tell them when William was born."   

Chip and I agreed it would be thoughtful to buy a gift for our neighbors.  "Maybe they have a registry," Chip suggested.  That was a great idea.  I rushed upstairs to get our computer, and I immediately pulled up two store websites in hopes of finding a registry.  I stared at the registry look-up form.  "Last name?"  I quickly figured out that it is virtually impossible to pull up a registry without knowing the recipient's last name.

Okay, so we didn't know our neighbors' last name.  In the old days one might have just gone across the street and asked, "What is your last name?" or "Congratulations on your baby!  Is there anything I can do for you?"  But no.  In this electronic age we live in, talking to people face-to-face or asking them for "personal" information, such as last names, feels a bit too intrusive and awkward. 

How did we solve the mystery?  The Internet, of course.  Did you know you could look up the names of all the people who live on your street?  We found out our neighbors' last name.  Isn't it weird that you can find that out?  It's funny to me; not in a ha-ha kind of way, but in a sad state-of-our society kind of way.  We know less and less about the people around us, don't we?

Wanna give it a try?  Wanna "virtually meet" your neighbors?  Go to the link below, and type in your address and let the neighborhood party begin.

     http://www.411.com/find_neighbors