Like many of you who are my impossibly young (cough) age, the first time I thought about my neighborhood as a kid was while watching Mister Rogers. The pothole-ridden, sidewalkless street I grew up on was fairly busy with cars that tended to speed around blind corners and over hill crests. We had no trolley. No shops. We rode the bus to school. On the other hand, we had fairly large yards for a suburb. None of this made an incidental conversation with neighbors an easy thing. We had to schedule interactions or settle for the telephone.

Mister Rogers’ make-believe hamlet was filled with memorable individuals, real and puppet, who solved problems together. His charming sets made me think about where my neighborhood started and ended. But my conclusion was sad. We didn’t really have a neighborhood. We just had a street.

In Mt. Lebanon, we are fortunate to have true neighborhoods, most of which are older than we are. Read about their history in Merle Jantz’s story, page 28. Whether you think about your neighborhood as being defined by your nearest elementary school, by the nearest business district, by the plan of lots on your property deed or by the official neighborhood on the municipal map, chances are, you can describe its boundaries. You can tell me about the memorable individuals. And I’m certain you can tell me some problems you have faced together, whether you have brought meals to a grieving family, cleared snowy sidewalks to help a new mom or figured out the best place to put the bounce house at the block party.

Mister Rogers has something to say about all that, too:

“All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That’s one of the things that connects us as neighbors — in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver.”

All this helps to inoculate us against the division that seems to be everywhere, on TV, on social media, in a crowded line at the supermarket. When the chaos gets to be too much, maybe that’s the time to schedule that get-together with your neighbors. Pick up the phone to see how they are. And to remember another of Mister Rogers’ great quotes:

“Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.”