We've all heard about nightmare neighbors.

And there's no question that they really do exist. Just ask me sometime about the cretin with neglected hellhounds that tried to set multiple midnight barking records. Thank God, they moved. Hope those poor dogs managed to find some cyanide capsules to chomp.

But sometimes I wonder if problem neighbors get so much attention that we in Spokane are in danger of assuming that their presence is the norm.

Maybe it is. How do you measure something like that? Still, I'll bet my current circumstance is far more common around here.

I like all my neighbors.

To the west is a considerate, affable family that owns a senior cat I have written about perhaps 1,000 times since she was a little shaver.

To the east are a two young families who couldn't be more congenial. Judging from campaign signs, I don't share at least one family's politics -- to put it mildly. But that has never come up and there's reason it has to.

To the the north is a couple I hardly know at all. But my few interactions with them have been totally cordial. They have some extremely well-behaved dogs. And I suspect them of routinely lugging over misdelivered mail.

And to the South is a newcomer, a bright young woman I trusted completely after 30 seconds.

A few years ago, I told a friend, John Speare, that I had never gotten a flat tire on my bike commute to work. "You are so getting one now," he said with a sigh.

I had forgotten. You aren't supposed to utter that kind of thing out loud. Jinxes things, some say.

So I hope declaring that I have good neighbors doesn't mean they're all about to move. I want my neighborhood lineup to stay just the way it is.

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