An Ever Changing Neighbourhood

I've lived in the same house since I was 4. That means that I have spent 18 years in the same house. The area that we were living in was a new subdivision so all the houses were built within two years or so of each other.

I didn't realize how much the surrounding neighbourhood has changed in the time that I've been here until recently with a new neighbour's ugly paint job that they did of a house they have moved into.

When I first moved here I was one of the younger people on the block. There wasn't regular Transit service in the area. That meant that people from Kindergarten to Grade nine had to share the same Yellow School Bus to get to their respective schools. The Transit system around here is still sketchy at best...but hey I live in Edmonton.

The thing that I notice the most is that I seem to know less and less about my neighbours. It seems that whenever people have moved, we haven't taken time to get to know the new neighbours. The movie cliché about baking the cake or pie for the new neighbours doesn't happen around where I live or ever has. Except for the three houses nearest me in the cul-de-sac who I know fairly well, all the other houses have changed owners. Some of the houses have changed owners multiple times. Maybe it's too much work getting to know people that might not be there in a year or two. Maybe it's just that we are all too busy to try to meet the new people. Maybe we are too scared or completely disinterested.

I remember when I was 7 or 8 and we had a couple of block parties in the summer. They were a great chance to get to know the neighbours of all ages and a way to eat some choice food.

Now I don't think that you would find anyone interested enough to try to organize something like that (including myself) nor would you be able to garner enough interest to make something like that successful.

That doesn't mean that I think that the neighbourhood is full of terrible people. On the contrary. People are friendly enough to give the 'courtesy wave'. I also feel very safe in my neighbourhood and there are never any people with loud music at night, no people who are having huge parties and nobody with a loud motorcycle. So I really can't complain. It's just that I feel that we are all living in the same area and that's it. There is nothing else which binds us together.

Of course, maybe it's just that I have glorified the past and only remember the good times and not the bad things, which is something that Jon Stewart always reminds his guests who feel that living in another era of before was superior to life now.

It just feels different.