Whatever happened to the neighborhood card or game nights? When did we stop knowing, I mean really knowing our neighbors?

When I was a kid I knew every person that lived in every house on my street. If they were around my age or my siblings’ ages I knew who their teachers were, what sports they played, recognized their parents and visited their houses often especially in the summer. Now I only know a few of them. I’m lucky if I know their names and their kids names and my kids who ride the bus with them can’t even name them all.

So why the shift? I’ll be honest my kids are 9 and still can’t ride bikes by 9 I was riding a bike and that gave me a small amount of freedom I could go across the road to my grandparents house and about a 1/2 mile down the road in either direction which I was lucky enough to have kids in both directions that were my age but still. My kids are allowed to walk across the street to their dad’s house and that’s honestly about it. People drive like crazy on my road these days and you just never know who might be in those cars and what kind of no good they could potentially be up to.

Something about knowing all my neighbors made me feel safe. If someone weird was around the house we would hear about it because a neighbor seeing it would stop and tell us or call us. I have neighbors now that I wouldn’t even recognize if I saw them in Walmart and that just makes me sad. There are young couples in the area again with kids the same age as my kids and I can’t help but wish it was like it used to be.

I’m going to blame this current line of thought on my grandma who so forcefully stated “Jade start a neighborhood card game.” To which my reply was “Grandma I suck at cards, why would I want to host a card game.” But since then I have been part of several conversations about how Covid has changed the world we live in, that people are isolated and that they need outlets and ways to interact with people in person.

Would it really be that terrible to host a monthly card game or game night? Or a campfire? We all need that social interaction and our kids need to feel safe in their world again.