There’s no hiding.  If you’re new to the street, expect people to walk up and down in front of your house trying to unobtrusively peer into your windows while you wrangle moving boxes.

Related: when you move in, people you’ve never formally met drop by with cookies and a post-it with their phone number, in case of emergencies.

People nod in understanding when you tell them you love the way flowering trees look but you NEVER want one in your own yard.

If you jog past a yard sale, you will be expected to stop and shoot the breeze, no matter how sweaty and stanky you are.  If you choose to go home and shower instead, you must then immediately return to the yard sale and explain that you didn’t want to poison everyone with your malodorous post-exercise stench.

You only have to tell one person when you have big news.  They’ll spread the news for you.  (The morning after I told one neighbor that hubby and I are expecting, I was stopped by two other neighbors who immediately said, “We’re a small street and… well, you know… so of course we’ve all heard the news!  Congratulations!”)

If you hire someone to work in your yard or on the exterior of your house while you’re at work, expect at least three neighbors to spend the day watching your house and give you their performance evaluations when you get home.

Everyone tends their yards with care, even though some are better at it than others (read: everyone is better at it than brown-thumbed me… were it not for hubby, our house would have no curb appeal at all).  And if things get a bit overgrown, we feel guilty.  We know you have to look at it.

Your waving arm will get just as much of a workout as your legs will on your evening strolls.

It only takes a few jogs or bike rides to get people believing you’re some kind of supreme athlete.

If you move away, we’ll welcome someone new into your old house.  But you’re never forgotten and you are always missed.  And invited back to trick-or-treat on Halloween.