Neighbors

I meant to post this yesterday, as it may wander into FV territory, but it's about neighbors in general, so I'll go for it. I should say up front I consider "friends" different from "neighbors," much the same way I consider "friends" different from "family." And Friends are different from any of them, because I'll shut the rest out if Friends is on. Yea, Joey!

My family has a strange history of neighborship (is it a word? It is now). My father had a running feud his entire life with one of our next-door neighbors in the home of my childhood. To my knowledge, he had no problem with the other next-door neighbor.

He came by it naturally. I listened to a story of his father's about the delight he took in pestering a neighbor who annoyed him. I must confess, like Mr. Darcy, the Turtle side of the family tends toward "resentful tempers." It takes a lot to tick us off, but once you've done it, it's done.

Proverbs has some things to say about neighbors. Things like "better a neighbor nearby than a brother far away," or "only a fool disparages his neighbor." I would hope I am no fool.

I have some interesting neighbors myself in the real world. Not to be disparaging, but one set I simply do not understand. They're young, I suppose. This is the time to be incomprehensible. The other set might as well not exist at all. They installed a six foot privacy fence within weeks of moving in (no offense, I was assured) and have pretty much stayed behind it ever since. To be fair, both sets of neighbors seem to be nice people. Incomprehensible, but nice.

No worries. I'm of the "live and let live" variety of neighbor myself. Just don't wake me up at 2 AM arguing under my bedroom window and we'll get along. No, wait, already done that. Oh well.

Farmville neighbors are another ball of wax. Some neighbors are quite attentive and helpful. I suspect these are the ones who enjoy the social aspects of the game as much as the competitive aspects (you mostly compete with yourself, but it is possible to try to "out-level" someone else). I have about 10 of these, and I try to be equally useful to them.

Other neighbors are very much in it for themselves. I can get things from them by accident, but they do not seem to pay attention to my needs at all. That's fine, too. As one new neighbor -whose farm I cannot load- recently told me after I apologized for neglecting her, she gets lots of stuff off my wall.
The middle-ground neighbors are those engaged in other games who farm occasionally. They try to be helpful when they're paying attention, and they leave plowed plots for those of us still very much in the game. Most of my FV neighbors are of this variety.

As far as co-ops are concerned, it finally occurred to me the problem is communication. Duh! Why don't we talk to each other about the co-op we're all in? Why don't we co-ordinate our efforts and get the Gold? Why have I not thought of this before? I used to be a therapist, for heaven's sake.

I have decided I'm too competitive to lead a co-op. I would be one of those harassing micro-managers I hate so much. That's no fun for anyone. So, I'll jump onto open co-ops that have a chance of at least finishing, and just settle for the gold rewards instead of the Gold rewards (that's gold, XP and sheep for the non-FVers).

It's annoying, though. If I could find some neighbors like me, we'd have more colorful sheep than crops and gold and XP coming out our ears of corn.

I've always considered myself most like Chandler from Friends, but on some things, call me Monica.