Tolerate Neighbors For Harmony

A good neighbor is rich, taciturn and childless, desires neither pets nor guests, and is fanatic about keeping the property neat and clean, but is horrified at the idea of making any creative changes in it.

This is not Miss Manners’ definition. Personally, she prefers to be surrounded by people who are alive.

But it seems to be the ideal of neighborhood associations and cooperative building boards. When their members convene to evaluate would-be neighbors or chastise the ones with whom they are already stuck, this is the standard by which they measure.

It’s not what they get, of course. Hermits tend not to play around with real estate. But even if buildings and neighborhoods could be filled with such types, Miss Manners is not convinced that they would improve the neighborhood.

She understands that the old-style model neighbor - friendly, helpful and hospitable - is capable of driving everybody on the block or floor crazy, and therefore maintaining some distance is desirable. You don’t want to have to keep explaining your life to people who are well-situated for conducting surveillance. Even neighbors who become friends are supposed to pretend they don’t see one another giving parties to which they are not invited or taking in the paper in their nightclothes.

A chatty neighbor can waste your time and destroy your patience; a nosy one has an unfair advantage in keeping track of who is coming and going. Children are sure to wail, play pranks, toss balls into windows or drive tricycles into hallway walls - and that’s only until they are old enough to develop a taste for what they euphemistically call music. The neighbors’ guests have the notion that they’ve also been invited to park their cars.

But you probably do want your neighbors to notice who is coming into your house by unscrewing the iron grille on a window. And you probably want to be trusted with the neighbors’ keys so you can get in when they are away and the wind sets off their alarm.

The children who cut across your lawn or push all the elevator buttons may be useful when you’re both older and you need them to shovel your walk or pick you up off of it when you break your hip. The neighbors who keep asking you to take in packages because you work at home can be asked, in return, to pick up things for you on their way home.

Anyway, Miss Manners is afraid that much of the annoyance of living near living people has to be tolerated for the sake of harmony, heavily backed by the fear of retaliation. At the very least, problems have to be handled with tremendous tact. They all know where you live.

It is a mistake to make a fuss about guests’ parking only to have the painters show up for work at your house the next day with very long trucks. Or to establish the principle of zero tolerance for minor infractions if you’re planning to lead a normal life.

Miss Manners keeps hearing about recalcitrant neighbors who are impervious to the comforts and complaints of others. She has no doubt that some such exist, and that it may take the power of landlords, neighborhood associations, police officers, zoning boards and the court system to make them behave.

But she suspects that many of them are being trained to be hostile. How else does one expect people to reply to angry threats invoking rights and insults about invasions of space? That they’re terribly sorry, didn’t realize they were causing a disturbance and will never do it again?

Miss Manners recommends using old-style neighborliness - an aura of good will, mixed with regret at having to call a problem to the attention of someone also presumed to be of good will - before resorting to lawsuits. It’s quicker and cheaper.

And it’s easier than finding neighbors who are never visually, aurally or personally intrusive.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate