So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

Amazing to me is a neighbor who walks out their front door, never looks left or right, never acknowledging anyone around them. Would it hurt to just say "hey" or throw up their hand, or at least grunt? Are they so absorbed in their own little world they could care about anyone or anything else? Only looking up after someone speaks to them first. Of course I guess it's just my smart-ass self, as I now make a big deal of speaking to them, nearly falling all over them. I'm sure they thing I'm completely nuts.
Guess I'm just guilty of growing up in a small town where everyone spoke to everyone, including strangers. A regular Mayberry R.F.D. A place where a neighbor was truly a neighbor aka someone you could count on. Hey just sayin'...

Aspie or schizoid disorder or German or all of it.

 

[3fingers]

Amazing to me is a neighbor who walks out their front door, never looks left or right, never acknowledging anyone around them. Would it hurt to just say "hey" or throw up their hand, or at least grunt? Are they so absorbed in their own little world they could care about anyone or anything else? Only looking up after someone speaks to them first. Of course I guess it's just my smart-ass self, as I now make a big deal of speaking to them, nearly falling all over them. I'm sure they thing I'm completely nuts.
Guess I'm just guilty of growing up in a small town where everyone spoke to everyone, including strangers. A regular Mayberry R.F.D. A place where a neighbor was truly a neighbor aka someone you could count on. Hey just sayin'...

I grew up in a rural area where waving was ingrained. After I got out of school for quite a while I drove about 40 miles each way to work on 2 lane state roads. After a while meeting the same people every day we all waved at each other. If someone went missing on the daily commute for more than a day or two I wondered what happened to them and was relieved when they reappeared. (Ya, I know, kinda weird.) I had one older fellow who always looked like he'd just bitten into a sour pickle and would not acknowledge a wave in any way. I made him my special project. It took a long while, but I broke him down. He became an enthusiastic waver and always had a smile.

 

[Zombie_61]

Not fun, I'm sorry...

Thanks, but after the third or fourth root canal I just got used to it and eventually decided I'd rather have a root canal than a filling. No nerves, no pain, don't have to worry about those teeth unless they start falling out. When my former dentist retired and sold her office and practice to my current dentist, the first thing the new dentist did was take x-rays so she'd have a current record of all of the dental work I'd had done over the years. As she was reviewing the x-rays in front of me, going tooth by tooth she was sort of thinking out loud, half describing what she saw and half explaining that to me. When she got to the fourth tooth she stopped, looked at me, smiled, and said, "Oh hell, you've had so much work done that you could probably explain it to me." I appreciated that, because she wasted no time in letting me know she had a sense of humor. Fortunately, she and her staff are also very good at what they do. Win/win.

...I was diagnosed with mild dyslexia in first grade (I think, my mother is hesitant about the story), which my parents decided was best to ignore - maybe good or bad, don't know, but letters and things still flip for me and I can't spell anything correctly. Today, they'd probably arrest my parents (but I think they sincerely didn't believe it was a big deal - we all knew a lot less then like "what the heck is dyslexia?").

Another part of the problem was that "educators" in past decades were reluctant to label any student as having any form of condition or disorder that would effect their ability to learn, because it would likely follow them throughout their scholastic duration and be perceived as some sort of stigma. I encountered this as recently as the 1990s when I attended a meeting designed to determine why the youngest son of a good friend was having difficulties with his homework assignments. (It's a long story, but I was a "surrogate dad" for him at the time). Unfortunately, the school staff did everything they could to work around the problem rather than solve it, i.e. not assume responsibility for his failures. "He has trouble with math." "Oh, well, there are calculators." "He has trouble spelling certain words." "Oh, computers have 'spell check'." They did everything they could to explain how he could "get by" rather than explain why they couldn't teach him what he needed to know. And when we pressed, their answer was that they didn't want to officially state he had a learning disorder because that would follow him for the rest of his life.

As it turned out, he didn't have a learning disorder. He had the same problem I had when I was his age and still in school--he was bored. In California public schools, junior high/middle school and high school aren't much more than a long "refresher course" designed to equip most students with just enough knowledge to pass the S.A.T.s. This is not so the students appear to be intelligent, mind you, but so the schools appear to be doing their job(s). He was bored because he already knew 90% of what they were trying to teach him. So his mother moved him to a private school where they took their jobs as educators seriously, and his grades improved immediately.

Amazing to me is a neighbor who walks out their front door, never looks left or right, never acknowledging anyone around them. Would it hurt to just say "hey" or throw up their hand, or at least grunt? Are they so absorbed in their own little world they could care about anyone or anything else? Only looking up after someone speaks to them first. Of course I guess it's just my smart-ass self, as I now make a big deal of speaking to them, nearly falling all over them. I'm sure they thing I'm completely nuts.
Guess I'm just guilty of growing up in a small town where everyone spoke to everyone, including strangers. A regular Mayberry R.F.D. A place where a neighbor was truly a neighbor aka someone you could count on. Hey just sayin'...

Our neighborhood was far more friendly when I was growing up here in the 1960s and 70s than it is now. Not in a "everybody knows everyone's business" way, but we knew each other by name, stopped to chat more often, and were always willing to help each other when necessary. Most of the neighbors who lived here then are gone now for various reasons, and the current crowd tends to keep to themselves. If it weren't for my wife and I taking our dog for a walk every night, we probably wouldn't know anyone here beyond the occasional wave as we or they drove past.

 

[HanauMan]

I also tend to mind my own business and I don't readily acknowledge my neighbors either.

I moved to my present address four years ago, prior to that I lived in a city of 250K people. I don't know my neighbors' names nor do I automatically say hello, or anything to be honest. Prior to moving into my present home, a small duplex house, I lived in a dirty and large residential building with transient occupiers. Everyone kept to themselves and I've taken that defensive barrier with me. I have always been quiet, reserved and shy, so that persona suits me well anyhow.

To be honest, I've turned into a sour old cuss and will often only speak when spoken too, if I can get away with it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I grew up in a neighborhood where we all knew each other, freely associated with each other, watched everybody's kids on a joint basis, etc. -- but the adults in the neighborhood didn't, for the most part, especially *like* each other on a personal level. There were no superficial courtesies exchanged -- it was more "Hey, if you see my kid tell her to get her ass home, she's got work to to do," yelled across the fence. Or "Hey, your septic tank is bubbling up in my dooryard --when you gonna do something about it?" Neighbors would have tea or coffee together here and there, or drink together at Fourth-of-July parties, but it was more like the kind of connections you find in a workplace than you find in sincere, close personal friendship, and it was punctuated by constant petty feuds over noisy kids, roaming pets, orange peelings or empty bottles thrown into yards, smelly incinerators, and leaking sewer pipes.

My mother has lived next to a certain other woman for all but five years of her seventy-nine years on earth. They were "frenemies" as kids in the 1940s, and they are still "frenemies" today. They exchange small talk in the street and then mumble "g-d b*tch" under their breath as soon as they turn away. It has now become a scowling, teeth-gritting competition between the two of them to see which will outlive the other, and my money is on Ma.

Neighborhood relationships have always struck me as alliances of necessity rather than personal connections. You don't really choose a neighborhood because you like the people in it, you choose it because you can afford to live there, and you have to take what you can get so far as neighbors are concerned.

 

[crawlinkingsnake]

I grew up in a rural area where waving was ingrained. After I got out of school for quite a while I drove about 40 miles each way to work on 2 lane state roads. After a while meeting the same people every day we all waved at each other. If someone went missing on the daily commute for more than a day or two I wondered what happened to them and was relieved when they reappeared. (Ya, I know, kinda weird.) I had one older fellow who always looked like he'd just bitten into a sour pickle and would not acknowledge a wave in any way. I made him my special project. It took a long while, but I broke him down. He became an enthusiastic waver and always had a smile.

Thanks 3fingers and very nice quote from your grandfather.

 

[crawlinkingsnake]

I also tend to mind my own business and I don't readily acknowledge my neighbors either.

I moved to my present address four years ago, prior to that I lived in a city of 250K people. I don't know my neighbors' names nor do I automatically say hello, or anything to be honest. Prior to moving into my present home, a small duplex house, I lived in a dirty and large residential building with transient occupiers. Everyone kept to themselves and I've taken that defensive barrier with me. I have always been quiet, reserved and shy, so that persona suits me well anyhow.

To be honest, I've turned into a sour old cuss and will often only speak when spoken too, if I can get away with it.

Understood but.... on our short dead end street, a cul-de-sac, only 7 houses and no thru traffic. I'm pretty certain I or any our other neighbors could be laying in the middle of the street, run over, bleeding, drunk, heart attack, etc., and this couple would continue getting into their car and drive away. Maybe it's a millennial thing.

 

[Fading Fast]

I grew up in a rural area where waving was ingrained. After I got out of school for quite a while I drove about 40 miles each way to work on 2 lane state roads. After a while meeting the same people every day we all waved at each other. If someone went missing on the daily commute for more than a day or two I wondered what happened to them and was relieved when they reappeared. (Ya, I know, kinda weird.) I had one older fellow who always looked like he'd just bitten into a sour pickle and would not acknowledge a wave in any way. I made him my special project. It took a long while, but I broke him down. He became an enthusiastic waver and always had a smile.

Something somewhat similar happened when I used to commute by train from NJ into Manhattan. Being the young guy at the time and, also, much of Wall Street starts very early, I used to have to get into my desk by 7am (at the latest), so I was taking the real early commuter train.

It was pretty much the same people in the same seats everyday and most of us would nod at each other but very few talked as, one, it was stupid early and, two, most of us were reading the paper (or work stuff, etc.). But if someone didn't show up for a few days, you got worried and would give them a particularly hearty nod / smile when they came back to let them know you were glad (and you got the same in return if you were "missing" for more than a few days).

Once in awhile, there'd be a problem and you'd be stuck either on the platform or the train itself for a long time and, then, some conversation would start up - and I formed a few friendships this way - but once the train returned to normal, most went back to their "assigned" seats and paper reading again.

I liked it as it felt friendly but left you your space.

 

[KY Gentleman]

I grew up in a rural area where waving was ingrained.

I sat on a jury once for a lawsuit involving damages for an automobile accident. The defendant was being questioned about his visibility before the incident occurred.
The plaintiffs lawyer said “my client says you even waved to him before the two of you collided!”
The defendant said, “I’m from Big Springs. Hell I wave at everybody.”
I’ve always remembered that line and it makes me chuckle.

 

[Harp]

I sat on a jury once for a lawsuit involving damages for an automobile accident....
I’ve always remembered that line and it makes me chuckle.

I once worked for the Veterans Administration Regional Counsel in Chicago and placed a lien on a veteran plaintiff's lawyer
to recover non service medical injury cost for which the veteran had received government care at a local VA hospital.
Unfortunately, the five or six grand came out of his suit against the other driver's insurance settlement.
The veteran came to see me to discuss the matter and after I explained the attendant legality he gave me a line
that I've always remembered but cannot repeat here.

 

[1mach1]

Coca Cola Zero.

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[3fingers]

Coca Cola Zero.

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The soda business in general went to hell on a shutter when glass bottles went away. All of the stupid products they throw out now don't help that a bit.

 

[1mach1]

The soda business in general went to hell on a shutter when glass bottles went away. All of the stupid products they throw out now don't help that a bit.

Not to mention all those energy drinks [emoji849]

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[3fingers]

Not to mention all those energy drinks [emoji849]

Yes. And I don't notice the people drinking them being any more energized than is necessary to maintain respiration either.

 

[1mach1]

Yes. And I don't notice the people drinking them being any more energized than is necessary to maintain respiration either.

I see kidney failure. Thats all Im saying. [emoji14]

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[ChrisB]

How many man-hours are wasted each year by people trying to put in micro USB connectors upside down?

 

[1mach1]

How many man-hours are wasted each year by people trying to put in micro USB connectors upside down?

[emoji14]

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[KY Gentleman]

Movie remakes of King Kong.
How many ways can you tell that story?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd like to see a revisionist take, where the monkey wins.

 

[KY Gentleman]

I'd like to see a revisionist take, where the monkey wins.

That’s the only version left.