Bad 'Hood

 DIH has come to the reluctant conclusion that she lives in a bad neighborhood.

Of course you wouldn't think it to look at the place. There are no drug dealers hanging around on street corners; no sirens wailing in the night. There isn't even any noticeable littering.

Instead there are lovely new houses and what's left of a few lovely farms. The corn is just about ready to be harvested and you can buy squash and pumpkins from stands on the highway.

So why did DIH come to this conclusion?

One word: neighbors.

Last week I couldn't get the lock on my front door to work. It's one of those keypad deals. I pressed in the code and the thing just spun around and around like it was auditioning for Wheel of Fortune.

I stood on  my porch for a good fifteen minutes, pressing and spinning and swearing undermy breath, getting nowhere.

And what did my neighbors do?

Did any of the watch from behind their curtains and call the cops?

No.

Did any of them march up my walkway and ask who the hell I was and could I prove I lived there? Did a single one of them demand to see my ID?

No.

This is not the way it was back in Queens. [An outer borough of NYC, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of visiting yet.]

One night my sister locked herself out of the house.  In desperation she decided to try the window.

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!"

She froze.  It was the neighbor from two doors down, a lovely man in the construction trade with an even lovelier wife and two kids.

"Who are you? What's your name? What are you doing here? Oh, so it's your sister's place! All right, what's you sister's name? What? It was your grandfather's house before now? Prove it! What's your grandfather's name?" All asked in decidedly non-dulcet tones.

Ever since then an extended grilling has been my idea of the proper neighborly response to  being locked out of one's house.

By the way, my neighborhood in Queens was virtually crime-free. Even before Giuliani.

We knew how to do things in Queens.