Oh give me land, lots of land....

Some of you may have noticed that I have a subtle theme of not liking my neighbors. Or maybe even people in general, it's hard to tell. There are reasons for this. Neighbors, I have decided, are the universe's way of forcing you to learn to say nothing when saying something would be so much more satisfying.

I bring this up because my husband met our new neighbors on Saturday, and they are decidedly not our kind of people, which is a disappointment, because we were social with our last neighbors, who we liked until they left us. It's not that we don't want them to be happy, but we're ticked that they executed the "lots of land and no neighbors" strategy first, and left us with... The new people. The new people are fine, honestly, but have already peppered us with questions about drainage, carpet stains, and wall color choices... for a house I didn't live in. They are not becoming people I can happy hour with, like our last neighbors.

Suburban neighborhoods are like a dreadful repeat of high school, which I was decidedly not good at. I was the girl that no one knew how to take because I had mastered advanced nerdy sarcasm, and the rest of the class was more worried about scoring Bon Jovi tickets. Repeating high school was not on my priority list, but a la Groundhog Day, here I am. Replace the mailboxes with lockers, and I'm transported back.

I can't talk to M, because I'm friends with J, and the two of them have some feud going on because M didn't invite J to playgroup because J has a boy, and we all know that boys and girls should never socialize. D is someone I could like, but she's a bit like the nice girl that hangs out with the "bad crowd" and I can't keep telling her that no, I can't come to the neighborhood kegger, so I avoid her. A is friends with M & G, and since M is involved in the feud, I have to be careful socializing with A, because I will then have to answer back to J because M might be there.... Are you tired yet? Keeping up?

So I spend my days in my house, with my children, avoiding them, and appearing "busy". Or picking the farthest seat away from "the group" at the pool. I am beginning to think that this why the original settlers all had so much land - they didn't need to farm that much land, they just couldn't stand each other. I'm even thinking that homeschoolers have the right idea, not because I'm so at odds with the school system (which inexplicably discourages a 5 year old from using the word "damn" in appropriate context), but because then I wouldn't have to face all of those wacky suburban mothers jockeying to get their child into the right class.

But instead, I'll live in my white bread neighborhood with my tract house and quietly try and move through unnoticed by my neighbors. I learned to disappear in high school; maybe it will work twice. Got any blue eyeshadow?