Commentary: How well should we know our neighbors?

On the street where I am temporarily staying in London, a newsletter arrives through the mailbox every few months. It details the neighborhood news, is often unintentionally hilarious (the last one had a single line about a local bakery running out of bread by 10:30 a.m., and the previous one profiled the neighborhood dogs) and gives residents a heads-up on any information from the local police.

The newsletter is written voluntarily by a neighbor, typed up and delivered by hand to every house on the street.

Every time it arrives, it feels like Christmas. I even send it on to some of my friends back home, who revel in the mundane detail and happenings on an ordinary British street halfway across the world.

On this particular street, most of the neighbors know each other by name. They house-sit when one family goes on vacation. The few elders who live alone are looked after by those who live near them, whether that means dropping by for a cup of tea or helping out with the weekly shopping.

At first, I found this behavior odd.

Do I want to know someone I live very close to that well? I thought.

It’s hard enough to schedule a time to go out for coffee with the people I actually know. What was the point of getting friendly with someone I lived near to the point where I was inviting them over to my house for coffee?

But the more newsletters I received, and the more useful and still hilarious news fell through the letter box, the more the entire idea of knowing who you live around became quite lovely. I started wishing I knew my neighbors back home too.

Recently, I was watching a drama series on TV in which the father figure of the show has a daughter who has moved in across the street.

“This isn’t the ‘70s, Dad,” she whines, while rolling her eyes.

This made me think even more about the fact that I knew virtually no one on my street. The closest I ever got to knowing them were unconfirmed and potentially fictional reports supplied to me by my grandmother when she lived with us.

She’d sit for hours in the kitchen, peeling vegetables or rolling grape leaves, watching the street and its inhabitants as if they were an episode of “General Hospital,” which she also watched, even though she knew only a handful of words in English.

I would occasionally hear about how she had witnessed the neighbor across the street get into a fight with her son, or that the one next door had had questionable guests over for dinner. She relayed these details with the utmost confidence, and there was no reasoning with her. She had seen it happen, she would say, so of course it was true. I was inclined to believe her.

Recently, I stumbled across another show called “Nightmare Neighbor,” in which seemingly friendly neighbors were now embroiled in suburban warfare, taking each other to court over a variety of problems they couldn’t agree on or issuing restraining orders against each other. It made me shudder.

Was this the result of getting to know someone too well? I then remembered a neighbor I had had years ago who complained to a manager about noise I was making. When I tried to introduce myself, she had ignored me. The complaints had been lodged not even a week into my arrival, so it wasn’t that I knew her well. It was just that she happened to be that way inclined.

I’d like to think that most people are good, so I’m still wishing for my own version of the newsletter neighbor back home. Though I can never match the misplaced humor of the newsletter I currently get, perhaps I’ll have to be the one to start it.

LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.