Now and then I have lived in a metropolitan area but never the mass transit type. If you live around NYC, Chicago or Washington my guess is you can get anywhere, anytime without a car. As a kid, I had a six-mile bike ride just to get a soda or ice cream. And then six miles to return home. I spent the first 20 years or so of life growing up in the backwoods of Central New York State. As a kid I didn’t have any trouble finding something to do. I believe that 21 acres of land may be the cure for Attention Deficit Disorder. If I had too much energy to sit still, or something was troubling me, I could just take a walk around the property. After you spend a solid 9 hours in the woods, alone, you will completely forget why you left the house in the first place.

Nowadays I have settled into a nice suburb of Charlotte, NC. I couldn’t be any further away from the city’s center without being considered living in the next town. There are cows just down the road but this is one of those newer developments that have taken over the farm and wooded land as the city’s inhabitants continue to expand outward. As a kid, if I wanted to visit with the neighbors I had a good hike to reach them. The kids on my “block” were spread over a three mile stretch of road, and that was a total of 15 houses. Growing up in a rural setting meant that when I took a job delivering pizzas at the age of 21, I didn’t yet know that one side of the street had odd numbered houses and the other had even. I have definitely been a “country mouse” for the better part of my life. This may be the cause of my antisocial nature.

It’s not that I don’t like people, I just don’t understand why the houses have to be so close together. When I was younger the house next door could have burned to the ground without you knowing it. Today, my neighbor can inadvertently change the channels on my TV with his remote. It’s hard enough to live right on top of each other, but some people go out of their way to be a nuisance. I have a fairly well trained Yellow Lab that knows enough not to bark every two seconds for hours on end. I can’t understand why anyone would want that kind of companion. If the person you lived with would not shut up for a few seconds each hour, you would probably consider having them put to sleep as well.

And to my neighbor; If your little yappy dog is terrorizing my back yard, please get off your cellphone and call it home instead of watching me fight my way to my car to go to work. And if you are going to have a loud party until the wee hours of the morning, at least invite me to attend. My only participation should not be when your guests choose to relieve themselves on my lawn before kicking trash out of their cars and driving home drunk. I don’t feel the need to impose myself on anyone else and I don’t need roommates anymore. But if your activities are going to infringe on my life so much, maybe you should be paying a portion of my rent.