Good neighbors come in all flavors.

[NOTE: This is sort of like an earlier post about the value of getting to know your neighbors but with a different take: The varieties, or flavors, of good neighbors.]

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines a neighborhood as "the people living near one another" or "a section lived in by neighbors and usually having distinguishing characteristics."

I think the dictionary people are thinking about two different neighborhoods: the one where we're all thrown together because it's the house we can afford, and the other based on ethnic or religious or whatever preference, including age (e.g., those over-55 enclaves).

Let's consider the former: people thrown together for no reason except that they/we chose to live in a certain part of town, a certain neighborhood.

These days, we're put into proximity by chance. You and your spouse, of whatever ethnicity or persuasion, chose this neighborhood -- this street, this cul-de-sac -- because it suited your family's needs: access to schools, shopping, etc. And it was the best you could afford.

Those of us who live on this modern-day street look up one day and find a new family moving in down the street. We see tne moving van. What do we do?

At best, we wave to you, as you wave to us, and then we all go about our own ways.

When I was a kid, growing up in a small town in Texas, everyone on my street knew me and what I was up to. And they knew my parents. And they told on me when I mis-behaved. They also took me in if I needed to be taken in; no questions asked.

We've evolved (devolved?) as a society, beyond that old small-town mentality of everyone looking after everyone else's kids, to one where we hardly know our neighbors at all.

What have we gained, and what have we lost?

We are all, for better or worse, now just a bunch of people thrown together because we've chosen to live where we live, for our own purposes. For the most part, we don't share a cultural/racial heritage. Which is good or bad, depending on how you look at it. We're no longer locked into certain ways of thinking about people. But, at the same time, we don't know each other. Or each other's kids. We occupy the same approximate space, but we keep to ourselves, within our respective families. We wave, we smile, but . . .

So, minus the old attachments that used to solidify neighborhoods, we have to come up with new ways of dealing with each other, new ways of being "good neighbors".

There are all kinds of good neighbors.

First, there are the ones who leave us alone, and we leave them alone. We might wave and even smile on our way to the mailbox and back. They have their own stories, which we don't want to explore and which they don't want to share with us. They also don't want to know ours. We co-exist in mutual cordiality.

Then there are neighbors who maybe we get to know, on a first-name basis which we promptly forget and have to try to remember later. Nice people, but only met on walks or in front of our houses or at the mailboxes. We pet their dogs when they sniff us. We probably don't get to know their children, but we do try not to run over them on their bikes and skateboards.

There are also neighbors who want us to be friends, who constantly try to engage us, to get us to do things with them: movies, bike rides, suppers, etc. That's fine if we're looking for that kind of relationship. If not, we have to be careful with our excuses, because they really are good people, and we want to keep them in reserve in case something dire happens and we need to call on them. We might bring their mail and newspapers in when they're out of town, and they ours. We may even have exchanged house keys.

Once in a great while, neighbors do become good friends -- people we would otherwise have wanted to spend time with -- and that's a real blessing. Often, though, it's only the wives or husbands who develop this bond so that it's kind of a strain for the families to get together since the other spouses haven't bonded the same way.

Human relationships are so iffy, so dependent on mysterious factors, that the chances of having neighbors who are also good friends -- both husband and wife -- are infinitesimal: next to zero. If you have neighbors that you and your spouse are best friends with, you've hit the jackpot. Count your blessings.

In the meantime, appreciate the relationships you have with your neighbors and keep in mind that there are all kinds -- all flavors -- of good neighbors. We don't have to all be buddies or gal pals just because we live near each other. But we do need to be polite and respectful of each other's space and privacy, and helpful if asked.

And while you're thinking about what kind of neighbors you have, give some thought to what kind of neighbor YOU are.

(By the way, there are various flavors of bad neighbors, too, but that's a subject for a different time.)

Now get out there and wave at somebody!