This made me smile. My mother was considered “a foreigner” when she and my father and their toddler daughter moved into the house where I grew up. It was suburbia. They watched her too.

But I have since come to realize that suburbanites watch everyone. My wife and I recently sold our house to downsize, and moved into a rental house a few blocks away. We are “the renters” on the street. People watch us: “Will they keep up their lawn? Will they attend the block party?”

My sister lives a town away, and she used to complain that her neighbors would notice when she came and went. They watched her; yet she was merely one of them.

When we lived in the house that we recently sold, it was a neighbor who tattled on our son that there were some unexpected comings and goings when we were out. She was watching.

People watch. It is not that you are different. It is them: they watch everyone. And then they gossip.