The question Tom Howell posed to himself was, “Is it normal to know only five people in your neighborhood?”. He has been living on the same street for 15 years, and a recent New Year’s Eve Party put his neighbor knowledge to the test, wherein he found that he actually had an abysmal score. So, in order to get to know his other neighbors, he asked them how many neighbors they can name, and gave them a sheet to fill out.
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With that cheat sheet, he was literally able to know all his neighbors’ names. But then that poses the interesting issue of the “middle ring” which was mentioned by the sociologist Marc Dunkelman in his book The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community. The “middle ring” refers to that group of people with whom you must socialize despite not liking their company.
Of course, living in the suburbs might be a factor to whether or not you know your neighbors is a good or bad thing. It might be different if you were living in an apartment complex or in the city where people’s social lives usually do not revolve around the people within their immediate vicinity. How many of your neighbors do you know?
(Image credit: Tom Howell)
Source: neatorama