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There\u2019s a dog named Preston, a Westie, I believe, who is featured in a commercial for a bank. His young dog mom poses the standard rhetorical question, \u201cWho\u2019s a good boy?\u201d then gets schooled by the pup, with the help of large glowing, talking buttons, on the attributes of the advertised institution.<\/p>\n
I guess the commercial has already seeped into our collective consciousness and spawned related references.<\/p>\n
Just a block away, several yard signs are on display, playing off the ad in the way they encourage pet owners to bag up their pup\u2019s waste. (Who\u2019s a good neighbor? You are! Oh yes, you are!)<\/p>\n
The sign always brings a smile to my face when I go on my morning walk with my spoodle (spaniel-poodle mix.)<\/p>\n
I love our walks. I love to see the small changes in weather from day to day. I love unexpected, at least, unplanned, conversations with neighbors. It\u2019s amazing to me how often I can recall the leashed pet’s name but not always those of their owners.<\/p>\n
Of course, there\u2019s a few people on my block and adjacent streets that I see every day. Our conversations might be more extended and more personal. During the pandemic, I really relished these conversations as they represented my very limited face-to-face contact with others.<\/p>\n
These coffee-less klatches are usually longer in the morning and afternoon and shorter during nighttime walks. At night, most of us are just interested in guiding our dogs through their toilet routine and getting back home before our favorite talk show host\u2019s monolog.<\/p>\n
On such a mission the other night, I ran across John (of John and Betty) and Cocoa\u2019s human mom. (I knew one neighbor by name but not the other.) They seemed to be waiting for someone driving and looked up from their conversation, towards the street, often.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi John,\u00a0 Haven\u2019t seen you for a while.\u201d \u00a0Before he could bend over and rub his hands through my dog\u2019s fur, I added, \u201cAre you having a dog parent convention or something?\u201d<\/p>\n
John briefly tried to confirm that I probably knew the other woman or have seen her on walks. She was holding her large-pawed dog in tow and offered up that they were waiting for an Uber. He pointed to a thin black teen maybe 30 feet away.<\/p>\n
A stranger in our \u2018hood all of us agreed.\u00a0 \u201cLord know how he got here.\u201d John explained, \u201cWe\u2019re waiting for an Uber.\u201d<\/p>\n
The female neighbor, who I didn\u2019t know by name, chimed in.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said his father would wake up after getting drunk and beat him. He said he wanted to stay at a relative\u2019s, that he didn\u2019t want to go back to his father\u2019s house.\u201d<\/p>\n
I still did not understand how the kid came to this intersection but listened to the continuing explanation as I was now vested in waiting, with the others, for the Uber.<\/p>\n
A dark late model sedan pulled up. Cocoa\u2019s human mom looked at the license plate and confirmed this was the vehicle that her phone app told her to wait for.<\/p>\n
John, slipped her a crisp twenty to give to the driver as a tip. She talked to the driver about the ride that was arranged for the teen and confirmed with the kid that his aunt, who said she would take him, lived at the address given to the Uber driver. He nodded, then slid along the back seat.<\/p>\n
No money was ever placed in the boy\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
I considered that this trip might have been a stunt concocted by the kid to go on adventure, but I also considered that this kid needed help. Getting away from some place early in the day seemed more pressing at the time than plotting out where he would end up.<\/p>\n
I felt good about living in my neighborhood.<\/p>\n
John and his wife accompanied me on walks after I fractured my arm and wasn\u2019t fully confident about taking my pup out at night. The young dad down the street has knocked on my back door a couple times to let me know I accidentally popped the trunk of my car.\u00a0 Mis-delivered packages intended for me, small parcels from Amazon or UPS, usually find their way to my building\u2019s front hallway within a day or two after they landed nearby.<\/p>\n
But these people, even if they didn\u2019t know me, knew who I was and that I belonged.\u00a0 It was easier to comprehend their kindness.<\/p>\n
But this was different. Or, was it?<\/p>\n
Knowing that a \u201cgood neighbor\u201d treats everyone well, not just you, not just people in their zip code, is no small thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s a dog named Preston, a Westie, I believe, who is featured in a commercial…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[632],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-blog","grateful-dozen-belonging"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n