The endless and strange social codes that make up life in Suburbia never cease to amaze me. While catching up with three other couples, and their kids, at our Labor Day gathering in Sammamish, we compared notes about the goings on in our neighborhoods.
There were four couples. All of us live in very Suburbia neighborhoods; three out of the four live in Suburbia, because we have kids while the other, childfree couple happened to fall desperately in love with a house, and desired a location of minimal population. My childfree friend, Monica, was late to the gathering, because her driveway was blocked by a party happening in their cul-de-sac. The main problem was she and her husband weren’t invited. Clearly irked by the snubbing, Monica humorously and verbally began dissecting the reasons why the invitation didn’t come. Her husband, Adam, finally chimed in and stated the obvious: none of these people were really their friends, they don’t spend any time with these neighbors, and in the end, neither Adam nor Monica, really cared about being invited in the first place.
Stacy, my friend who gave birth to twins three weeks ago, said she had the same problem in her neighborhood. One night, while she was loading her twins and their toddler age brother into the car when she happened to run into a neighbor that told her about a neighborhood playgroup that had been meeting nightly all summer at 7:00 p.m. Stacy attended that night, but was also a bit miffed at the lack of neighborhood outreach. She figured that the main reason she and her family were finally invited to the playgroup was due solely due to her parent’s dog. Her parents have a little wiener dog named Sam, who was born with bladder issues. Sam has to wear diapers, and in order to keep the diaper on also wears an infant sized bathing suit. Stacy’s dog Milo escaped one day with Sam in toe, and the neighbors became curious about the little dog in the costume.
Our gathering host, Rachel, said she barely knows her neighbors, and, like Jeff and I, really doesn’t care about participating in playgroups. I begin to wonder why, then, did I move to Suburbia if it was all just one big, preppy, high school-style clique. Sure, I have a kid who will benefit from a safe, clean neighborhood, but I wonder how much social interaction she will have with other neighborhood children if I’m not more of an involved mom. Could my cynicism towards establishments and ridiculous social codes be negatively affecting her already? After all, I thought I had at least another five years before that happened.
I could make more of an effort to bring Rachael to the playground around 5:00 p.m., which is the high traffic time. Maybe I should be more outgoing and smiley when I meet my neighbors at the mailbox, but it all feels so damn phony to me. Besides, why should I have to do all the work! Monica is on the Welcoming Committee in her neighborhood and says she is always friendly to her neighbors, yet she was snubbed at the neighborhood barbecue. Why wouldn’t my neighbors want to invite my family to a gathering, after all, it’s not like we are a bunch of strange-looking freaks, and even if we were, that’s all the more reason to invite us over. I would invite freaks to my house, because I guarantee they would be a hell of a lot more interesting than the other tight-asses in this neighborhood.
As we ate burgers and passed the tiny twins around, we all brushed off our respective neighborhood snubbings as the problem of the snubbers themselves. We had all gone out of our way to say “hello” and wave at our neighbors, but concluded that they, not us, had dropped the ball. Stacy, who is amazingly outgoing and fun, says she’s making cookies today to take to a new family that just moved into her tract. I figured that anymore, you just have to be very guerilla about meeting new people. I think her cookie idea is a good one, and I will do the same as soon as the house on the end of the street is put up for sale, and purchased by new owners, which I know will happen soon given that recently, the wife threw a knife at her husband leaving him with minor stitches. She has already taken the kids and moved out, so I expect to see the “For Sale” sign any day now, because once you stab your spouse whether fatally or not, it’s only a matter of time before someone’s getting a lawyer.
In the meantime, I’ll put the cookie dough in the freezer and keep the baking sheet handy. Hopefully, the newest residents to my end of Suburbia are interesting. Maybe I’ll luck out and the mom will be a former riotgrrl and the dad will have a full-sleeve tattoo, and they will have a cynicism of living in Suburbia, but are resigned to residing here because of their kids. In a perfect world, my newest neighbors would be cool. Most likely, they will be the same tight-asses who already live here, but this time I will make the first move, get guerilla, and bring them cookies.
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