neighborhood

I really like the man who works at the corner store. he is happy to shave a few cents off the price of my ginger beer or let me pay with a credit card for a $1.89 purchase even though there is a $5.00 minimum for credit card purchases, and he always changes out my $2 for laundry money on sundays, and when he does this, he smiles wide and tacks on "for you" at the end of his sentences, like "yes, I can change the money, for you" though we both understand that there's nothing special about me save the fact that I live in the neighborhood, and that his corner store is my corner store. this is why I like him. his regular indications that I am, in fact, his neighbor, which sure, translates into "semi-regular customer," and it's always good to maintain happy relations with the regulars, but still, there seems something else there, something underlyingly neighborly that, at the end of the day, is what places are or should be about, the places we choose to inhabit, settle into.