Interesting Neighbors

Today's blog was inspired by H.R. Sinclair's June newsletter. If you'd like to sign up, visit her blog here. Her newsletters rock. In the June one, she asked herself questions, and one of them was who was her most interesting neighbor. That was the question that started me thinking about this blog.

I've lived a lot of places. Not so many as a child, but a dozen or so being married to a Coast Guard officer. In light of that, I decided to do a top-ten type list of interesting neighbors I've had over the years. It's not in a top-ten type format exactly, but more from when I was a kid up to a few years ago. No one where I live now would make this list, at least not as far as I know. I could be wrong.

• A playmate who became a lifelong friend.
• A man who played practical jokes on my dad, who hated every single one of them.
• A man my dad swore was Mafia-connected. Not the practical joker.
• A teen who taught me to skate - mostly by shoving me down her steep driveway.
• Not one, not two, but three different men who later went to prison. And not the one my dad believed to be a mobster.
• A woman who talked incessantly and was the spreader of all gossip and malicious rumors while painting herself and family as saints.
• Another woman who was a fabulous baker who liked to share her bounty with her neighbors. Even she couldn't teach me how to make a pie curst.
• A kid who grew up to be a reality TV star.
• A law student who is now a famous criminal defense attorney.
• Two law enforcement officers in our block who worked for two different agencies.
• And last but not least, a wildlife trail that ran through our property. We were visited by a variety of National Forest animals on a daily basis, including a neighborhood bear that liked our deck.

I've probably forgotten some that should've been included, but maybe not.

See you next month. Happy Summer!