Living in a residential area in a first world nation should no longer have the Whitepages sitting on the kitchen bench for you as the mandatory piece of literature at hand over of they keys.

No.

It should be a new, shiny, very crispy edition of “How to Live In Suburbia For Dummies”.

There should be a check list involved that the new resident can go through and tick off to make sure that they are aware that living in close proximity of others should bring with it an awareness of who lives around them.

Or if shyness is an issue, then knowing that if you can see the shade of taupe your neighbours drapes are, it’s a pretty strong indicator that you aren’t living at Giligulgul on a Santa Gertrudis stud.

You know like assuming that the existence of children would be a high probability. The impressionable ones. Children who have a bed time and perhaps parents with a penchant for moderated dialogue with little to no profanity.

This manual would have diagrams helping new residents to understand social skills associated with what part of the house or yard is a good place to conduct a gathering of people: especially when the menu consists of VB, JBs, beer nuts and green cocktail onions straight out of the jar.  Case studies.  Lots of case studies documenting with scientific and financial data as to why people exist in a suburban situation in a quiet street for lifestyle choice reasons as well as wanting to live around other people with young children, babies and people with all their teeth and jobs.

I’ll be writing to the authors on Monday to suggest a revision for the next edition.  I think this chapter would be a winner and whack this book on the top seller list again:

“Knowing when the F-bom is a verb or an adjective and the C-bom has no adverb equivalent.”

Do you have any chapters you would like to recommend be added?  I’ll include them with my recommendation.

**this is a missive of fictional overtones; no garden gnomes were harmed or stolen while documenting the phenomena that is oblivious socially inept humans who believe that it is their God given right to be whoever the f*ck they want.