Several weeks ago, getting ready for dental work to fix one of the little gifts left over by the “bad dentist” from 20+ years ago, I walked over to the grocery store to figure out what I wanted for dinner. I wanted to meal prep in advance—just in case I could eat normally afterward… or ended up living off shakes for the rest of the month.
The grocery store is about a five-minute walk with two reusable bags, as long as my purchases aren’t too heavy, and then about ten minutes back to the house.
On that food run (well, walk), I noticed the huge utility pole ahead of me leaning just a little to the south—away from the street but toward one of the houses. An historic home, around a century old. I caught myself thinking that if it took a harder lean in the next hurricane, it might bisect the house, crushing the back half of it—bedroom, laundry room, maybe even part of the neighboring house.
I noticed it again the next day on a follow-up walk to pick up applesauce. The pole still looked stable, but it made me nervous. It’s big enough that I might be able to fit my arms around it, maybe, but it’s massive—standing between the sidewalk and the street, a space only a few feet wide. Cables looped and crossed all around it. I made a mental note to call it in the next day.
I forgot.
Instead, I went in for dental work and basically didn’t get out of bed for two days. On Friday afternoon, around sunset, I walked around the corner to see if I could find some ice cream at the pub—and looked straight up at a seriously leaning pole. One of the supplemental poles about six inches away had a cable running parallel to the larger one, and the monster pole was now leaning enough to touch it, making the cable strain.
In less than three days, that pole had leaned six inches farther south. Toward the house.
I didn’t know that neighbor. When I say “neighbor,” I mean someone a full block from me—but still in my neighborhood. A lot of these historic homes have been turned into vacation rentals, but I’d passed this house enough to know the occupants weren’t tourists.
They also weren’t home. The house was dark, and no one answered the door.
No problem, I thought. I’d just head back home, eat ice cream, and find the right number to report the threatening pole.
Easy, right?
Or it should have been.
Since the office was closed, I tried several ways to report the problem over the weekend. Unfortunately, I ended up going in circles—online chatbots disconnecting me, emails bouncing, phone calls cutting off.
After two hours of this, I was frustrated. After all, I didn’t know this neighbor. It wasn’t my problem. If it fell, it wouldn’t affect my home, my electricity, my safety, or my bank account. Why bother, right?
But I couldn’t ignore it. Those neighbors would come home eventually and might go to sleep in the room directly in the path of that leaning pole. I couldn’t just leave them to fate if I could keep them safe with a simple report.
So yes, I was willing to make their problem my problem—to be a good neighbor.
But apparently that wasn’t enough.
The responses I finally got—three times—were polite but dismissive: Did the pole threaten my home? No. Had it caused me to lose power? No. Then thanks for trying, but I wasn’t an interested party. It didn’t affect me.
Yeah, you know me. I couldn’t leave it alone.
No, it wasn’t my problem. No, it didn’t affect me. But I could still prevent harm by taking action. I tend to live and let live, to interfere only when someone genuinely needs help or faces an emergency. But this time, the “official helpers” were the ones telling me not to bother.
How much effort do you put into something that doesn’t touch your life—especially when the people in charge tell you to stand down?
That question stayed with me.
So I went back to the neighbor’s house. By now, it was after 10 PM. They still weren’t home, and my painkillers were calling. I wrote a note and left it, telling them where I lived if they needed photos showing how fast and how far the pole had shifted.
Then I went home, took my meds, and slept nearly 20 hours.
They must have come home sometime over the weekend, because when I went for a walk on Monday morning, the pole stood upright again—rigid, anchored, and no longer a threat.
It’s a small story about neighbors and neighborhoods, but it’s something bigger, too. About responsibility that doesn’t stop at our property lines. About doing what we can, even when it isn’t required.
The pole’s straight again, anchored and stable. Maybe that’s what being part of a neighborhood really means—quietly helping things stand upright, even when they’re not in our yard. And maybe that’s what it means to be part of a larger community, too, stepping in and making sure others are safe, even when their pain won’t ever touch us.
Young Maeve must protect the reincarnated witch queen from ancient enemies and shadowy conspiracies.
Visit the Book Page →
For more on navigating life as an empath, explore the Empath Hub.
Practical shielding for empaths and highly sensitive people who absorb everyone else’s emotions.
Visit the Book Page →