bobby posting:

As I was mowing our front lawn yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice the clear line I was making between my yard and my neighbors.  Everytime I came to that edge I carefully trimmed right there on the imaginary line, taking care not to accidentally trim my neighbors grass.  As I was finishing our plot of land, something wild popped in my head.  Why not go ahead and trim the neighbors little section of grass as well.  They have an enormouse driveway and a little section of grass about 1/3rd the size of a normal lawn.  I checked the driveway.  No one home.  I slyly sneaked over there and blitzkrieged it like James Bond on a mission.  Can you stealthily mow a lawn?  I’m not so sure.  I finished it up and ran the mower back to my house to put the evidence away.

An hour later, me and the missus were sitting in our living room with the screen door opened to let that cool breeze into the house.  We were loudly jamming to a mix-tape of “world music”, which means that anyone approaching our house probably thought we were either a) toking it up OR b) frolicking on the rug.  Neither of which were true.  Except for the fact that someone did approach our house:  our neighbors!  Here was the moment of truth.  Busted!

The neighbors on one side of our house are the kind of neighbors you hope for.  Helpful.  Sweet.  Dependable.  Quiet!  The neighbors on the other side…the ones whose lawn I mowed?  Well they’re no good, obviously.  Why?  Because for some sick reason we, I mean I, always assume that neighbors are punks.  I am usually pleasantly SURPRISED to find otherwise.  In the meantime I go about thinking of them as stand-offish.  Now I’ve had some bad neighbors in the past that shaped that opinion.  It didn’t just come out of nowhere.  In fact, I believe I’d even had a moment like that with these neighbors.  I once set out some trimmed limbs from bushes and trees in our backyard on that “imaginary line” in the front yard.  I came outside the next morning to find those limbs off the “line” and significantly pushed into our yard.  There was no confusion as to whose limbs those were!  But does even that, does something that small and silly, albeit annoying, give me the right to judge?  Of course not.  That’s what makes me a punk.

Well the neighbors who I’d yet to describe in “correct terms” approached the door.  We had Erin’s dog over too…which made for two loud dogs barking…loud global music blaring…and Amy running off in her painting clothes so no one at the door would see her.  I’m sure it made a great impression.

I opened the door and met Marilyn for the first time.  She seemed like a sweet enough middle-aged woman, but she wore a look of shock on her face.

“Umm…I just wanted to thank you for mowing our lawn.  We really, really appreciated it.”

After hearing “we”, I looked over to see a middle-aged man standing on the line between their yard and ours.  That line of course now blurred by two freshly mowed lawns.

“Hi.  I’m Rick.  I just wanted to say, ‘Thanks’, as well.”

“Well I’m Bobby.  And my wife is Amy.  And we just thought we’d like to help if we could.  Nice to meet you guys.”

And that was about it.  Marilyn and Rick both looked at me, their faces full of gratitude and question marks.  But for me there was nothing confusing about it.  After moving home to Arkansas in March, me and Amy have been struck with the idea of community.  We want to know the people that do life around us.  We want to know church members, and familiies, and other twenty-somethings, and, of course, our neighbors.  We’d been wanting to get to know the house next to us now for 6 months, but had never really had the chance.  What I meant to say, was that I’d never really made the choice to take that chance.  Until last night.  Until I decided to take 5 extra minutes to cut down that border.  If you have 5 extra minutes today or 5 extra hours this month, whatever it takes, cut down whatever borders there are in your life blocking you from real, open community.  It’s worth it.