I love our neighbours and our neighbourhood.
It’s a good place to raise our kids and feel like someone is watching out for our home and our family. We have good people around us and that makes it easier to accept the rate of our property taxes (that part is a lie). And when there is a good party on the street, we get to crash it.
Actually, we have the kind of neighbours where if you don’t show up at the party, they will come to your door and get you. They even deliver cold beverages to the Carpenter, to lure him from his big screen television and coax him over to the other side of the street. If I don’t follow, the pattern continues. It’s hilarious and heartwarming. It is a good reminder for the Carpenter and I, who have become rather anti-social due to renovations and kid schedules, that community isn’t just where you live, but how invested you are in the place you call home. We aren’t the best investors.
Sometimes we are even envious of our neighbours. They have a large extended family that actually wants to get together to celebrate any occasion. Generations of relatives, complicated relationships to be sure, but all gathering to celebrate their connections, because they all work hard and share a sense that life is too short not to have fun.
Guaranteed it will be a loud laughter kind of night, where stories get shared, problems get sorted, and in the end you know they’d do anything for each other. We often come back from an event at our neighbours thinking how lucky they are that they have each other. If the Carpenter or I threw a party for our extended families, we’d never get that turn out, and we know it. That’s a sad truth. So, when there is a bash across the street, we get adopted.
It wasn’t our intent to crash this weekend, as we saw the neighbours gather for a birthday party to honour the woman we consider the matriarch of the neighbourhood. The Carpenter and I were enjoying a quiet night at home (shocking, I know). That is until we heard the horrendous off-key vocals from a male voice amplified over speakers coming from the neighbour’s garage. It was their annual garage karaoke party. Hearing them have fun was pleasure enough and karaoke was reason enough to avoid this bash.
It’s like they knew that, and it wasn’t long before the invitation to join them was offered up. The Carpenter, easily tempted by the cold beverages, went first, but I soon followed. The curiosity was too much. The only problem was the karaoke machine was being queued up for me, without my consent. Apparently my neighbours read this column and knew that I liked to sing, in the car, alone. So, the challenge was put forth that I belt it out karaoke-style for the comical pleasure of all in attendance.
I would like to formally apologize to the other quieter neighbours in the volume range of the karaoke machine, on behalf of the Carpenter, and myself for our disastrous rendition of Sonny and Cher’s I’ve got you babe. One of us had liquid courage and I am no Cher. Karaoke ended soon after. It might have been our fault, hard to say. Yet, a good time was had by all. Happy Birthday B.