It seems to me that neighbors are going out of style(式样) in America. The friend next door from whom you borrowed four eggs has moved, and the people in there now are strangers.
Some of the old ideas about neighbors aren't practical and are silly, and it may be just as well that our relations with our neighbors are changing. The Biblical(圣经的) demand to "Love Your Neighbor" was probably a poor translation of what must have really been "Respect Your Neighbor". Love can't be called up（唤起） on order（听从指令）.
Fewer than half the people in the United States live in the same house they lived in five years ago, and there's no reason to love the people who live next door to you just because they happened to buy the place next door to yours. The only thing neighbors have in common to begin with is that their houses are near each other, and unless something more develops, that isn't reason enough to be best friends. It sometimes happens naturally, but the chances are very small that your neighbors will be your choice of friends. Or that you will be theirs, either.
The best relationship with neighbors is one of friendly distance. You say hello, you talk to them if you see them in the yard, you discuss problems as they come up and you help each other if needed. It's the kind of situation where you see more of them in the summer than in the winter. The fence between you is not really unfriendly, but it marks a clear boundary(界线). We all like clear boundaries around us.
If neighbors have changed, neighborhoods have not. They still contain the same things. If you live in a real neighborhood you can be sure most of these types of people will be found there:
- One family with more kids than they can take care of.
- A dog that gets into rubbish cans.
- One big home with a family so rich that they really aren't part of the neighborhood.
- A bad kid who steals or sets fire to things, although no one has ever been able to prove it.
- People who leave their Christmas tree up until March.
- An unfriendly woman who won't let the kids walk through her yard.
- Someone who doesn't cut his grass more than twice a summer.
- Someone who cuts his grass twice a week and one of the times always seems to be Sunday morning at 7:30.
- One driveway with an old, bad-looking car that's always sitting there.
- A family that never seems to turn off any of the lights in the house.
- A young person who plays the radio too loud in the summer with the windows open.
- Someone who leaves his barking(吠) dog out until 1l:30 most nights.
- One couple that comes and goes, but hardly anyone ever sees them and no one knows what they do.
- A couple that has loud parties all the time with guests who take an hour to leave once they get outside and start shouting good-bye to each other.
- Someone who doesn't close the window curtains.
- A house, with a big tree whose owners don't pick up the leaves until most of them have blown into someone else's yard.
It is easier to produce good memories about a neighborhood than about a community(社区), but a community is probably a better unit. A neighborhood is just a group of separate people who live near each other, but a community is a bigger group of people who work together to get some things done.
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