As we were attempting to write a headline summarizing this month’s cover story, our editor, Pamela Dunsmore, said it best: It’s really about hugging your neighbor.
That six-word sentence says about the same thing our 2,000-word cover story does.
It seems to simple. Why is it so difficult?
I could hug my neighbor, but he works a different shift than I do so our paths don’t really cross much. And besides, I have to disarm my home security system, shuffle between our family watchdogs, open the gate of my six-foot-tall wood privacy fence, and walk over to the neighbor’s yard just to say hello.
And by the time I do all of that, he’ll probably already be in his house anyway.
What about the other direction?
Well, down the street a ways, there’s one couple with a son the same age as our oldest son, but that child attends a private school, so the kids don’t see each other around much.
Skipping down a few houses (I don’t really know the people in those houses very well), there’s a nice family with a couple of kids near our children’s ages, and those children actually attend the same school as my son, but it’s been pretty hot lately to walk over there. I guess we could invite them over; well, maybe we will sometime.
And down the street a little farther is another couple with whom we attend church; they have a son who’s only a week older than our oldest, but they operate their own business, and they’re pretty busy, and their son attends a different private school than the other kid down the street.
In fact, their child attends the same private school that another of my son’s friends a street behind us attends, and that family’s pretty nice, but they’ve got a couple of other kids, one of whom attends still another private school, so they’re pretty busy, too.
And when I’m at home not hanging out with the neighbors, I’m watching the nightly television news shows and their rapidly multiplying offspring and learning about hideous crimes all over the country that apparently have a vital impact on my life here in our neighborhood.
I suppose I could hug my neighbor. But it’s just a whole lot easier to stay home, fasten the deadbolt, fire up the security alarm, kick back in front of my big TV with surround sound, find out everything there is to know about the day’s latest tragedy somewhere, and wonder why the world is such a frightening place these days.
