Does everyone know about the NextDoor app, or is it a
California thing? I hadn’t heard of it before moving to my current home, but
now it’s a daily reminder about the very important issues that are causing
feelings in the humans to whom I live in proximity.
It’s an app whose membership is limited to a specific
geographical area. You have to prove
your residence in order to join. Therefore, I am not privy to the feelings of
the fine folks who live in the next town over, nor are they in the know about
the hot topics in my neighborhood. I used to wonder if my NextDoor was an
anomaly, if other neighbors used the platform to barter and josh, to create
friendships, or to find love and lost pets. Mine is a little, how shall I put
this delicately… bananas.
There *are* quite
a few lost and found pet stories and there *is* some bartering of goods and
services, and I’ve looked at the recommendations section many times when I’m in
need of a local service. However, I live in the flight pattern of an
international airport. It’s loud, but
you really do get used to it and I barely even notice the resounding jet
engines taking off directly over my head at regular intervals between exactly
6:30am and exactly 11:30 pm. It’s a small price to pay for my lovely home in
this dog friendly town drenched in sunshine. The NextDoor people are less
forgiving. If a plane dares violate the curfew by a split second, the site
erupts with complaints and pleas for all readers to report the offense. I think
this is the most frequently discussed topic on the site, but dog poop, bad drivers, and anti-homeless rants
are also quite faithfully represented.
So I used to wonder if other NextDoor groups were happy
friendly fun-loving communities, but then I started comparing screen shots of
some of the more colorful exchanges and comments with 2 friends who live in
different areas, and was introduced to the pure gold that is
#bestofnextdoor.
My friend Janet shared one of my recent screenshots there:
It’s astounding, no?
That’s a good NextDoor anecdote. But I have an even better
story
On a recent workday afternoon, I was in contact with my
daughter who had been in a 24 hour tizzy after losing track of her debit card. This
particular tizzy had initiated the night before after a perfunctory look
through her car, because she knew she had had the card in hand after meeting up
with her friends that afternoon. She had grabbed her wallet, containing the
debit card and a $10 bill, before returning a borrowed purse to her friend.
Then she got into her car and drove home. So it had to be in the car, right? She’d
taken a quick look in the car, but it was dark and she was tired and blah blah
blah, she’d look again in the morning. No luck in the morning, but of course
she was rushing to school so couldn’t give the task the attention she deserved.
By the time she called me at work with an update, she was resigned to the fact
that it was gone. I agreed to cancel her card, and mentioned to my coworker
that I might need to step inside because I couldn’t do so on my phone. That coworker was leaving for the day and
wished me luck.
2 minutes later, that coworker stepped back out to ask: “Was
your daughter in my neighborhood this weekend?”
She had taken a look at her phone on the way out of work, you see. And
she had an alert from her NextDoor community. An alert from one of her
neighbors with my daughter’s full name in the subject line, asking if anyone
knew who she was, because they had found her debit card on the sidewalk and wanted to get it back to her.
It’s astounding, no?
