If I am ever your neighbor, I can guarantee you a few things. One, I will learn your name, the name of your spouse and your children, and if your kids are anywhere near the age of mine they will be invited over to make a mess in my living room and eat popsicles and watch cartoons. I will talk to them as if they are people and not just small children. I will offer to watch them for you when you need to run errands. Two, any rules at your house will be the rules here, so if your kids aren’t allowed to watch TV or play video games or whatever they won’t do it here either. Three, I will do my best to find toys for your girls to play with even though I don’t have any (yet!) and the boys just want to build Bionicles. Four, my husband will offer you our lawnmower if yours breaks and will come over with his toolkit if there is a frog in your van’s dashboard (it really happened). We don’t play obnoxiously loud music or throw wild parties or play basketball in the street all night.

I can also guarantee you this. If your bossy 6 yr. old constantly tells my 6 yr. old what to do, if she informs him that he has to leave someone else’s house because she has arrived, if he comes home close to tears because she has told him “stop speaking to me, don’t even speak to me IN YOUR MIND”, I might make the mistake of telling another playmate’s mother that I don’t think it’s fair for this little girl to boss him around at someone else’s house. And then that mother might tell you what I said, and you might twist it around in your mind until it becomes an insult to your whole family, and then when I come over to find out why Nathan is not allowed to play with your daughter you might have to tell me that I am banned from your property. And that you’re sorry my son is such a baby with such fragile feelings, that’s not your problem.

And then I might have to envision what would happen if there was a real emergency at your house one day, an accident or a fire or something, and the police ask me why I didn’t rush over to help and I have to say “gee, officer, I’m sorry, I’m banned from her property because she can’t accept that fact that her 6 yr. old is bossy and controlling and manipulative, just like her mother.”

Now please don’t freak out, I’m not going to cause an accident or start a fire or anything, but I am going to suck it up and write her a nice letter of apology, in the interest of being a good neighbor, because I don’t think we’ll ever be friends. And if in 10 years I find out that Nathan and Miss Bossy are secretly dating and planning to run away together (because karma is a BITCH), I’ll have to send him to military school. Because as BC reminded me, “You remember how well it turned out for Romeo and Juliet.”