8 Favors Men Should Ask Their Neighbors

My neighbor, JT, is seven feet tall. Or close to it.

His dog, Mia, is 10 inches high at the spikiest hair on her pointiest ear. Or close to it.

JT and I have been neighbors for almost two decades. Telephone-pole JT and Mia the Mini stroll the streets every day on his lunch break. Quite a pair. Mia takes 47 steps for every Ent-like JT stride.

A couple of years ago, I asked JT if I could borrow his ax and maul to split some wood. (See #4 below.) He said yes, but only as long as he could come help. He didn’t seem worried about me or his tools, rather, he seemed eager, like I’d asked to borrow his football and was going to have all the fun by myself.

As we stretched, he casually mentioned that he used to split wood for a living.

What? I stared at him, trying to figure this out.

We live in the city. JT has a cantaloupe-sized yip-yip dog with the same name as my daughter. He runs a dental instruments startup. He’s as skinny as a toothbrush. And he used to split wood for a living? I didn’t even know you could split wood for a living. Who is this guy I’ve been living next to all these years?

He took one swing and I was a believer.

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