Dec042008
In Here and Out There: Security vs. Isolation
Filed under Home by Kim at 10:34 pm on Dec 04 2008
This evening I was thinking about how when it’s all quiet in the house, and particularly this happens when I am studying, I freak out at little noises. I can identify all kinds of noises around our abode; mostly they are outside. We’re extremely blessed (for some agnostic value of blessing) to be able to live in our little victorian single family, but it’s a fact that it’s located on a postage-stamp sized lot and on two sides is bordered directly by sidewalk. So I hear lots of stuff. But I have learned in four years to filter all that out, so I recognize immediately when a sound is weird.
Like sometime last year when I heard a drunk driver do a hit & run. I knew before the hit that the driver was driving erratically. And this is from a state of drifting off to sleep. Or fights – I can identify normal high-schooler-play fights vs. someone-on-the-cell-phone-with-a-loved-one-endearitating fights vs. domestic-disharmony-and-we’ll-see-the-cops-soon fights.
Sometimes I admit I fantasize about having a place “out there”. I guess I by this I mean beyond the suburbs, in a place where you can’t necessarily see your neighbor’s house – or really, even a place where you can see a couple of neighbors but they couldn’t hear you if you went outside and had a normal conversation. But on nights like tonight when I’m home alone and trying to study but listening for marauders, I think… wouldn’t it be that much more terrifying to be so far away from everybody?
Today Jack’s mom called me to tell me about an attempted kidnapping that happened nearby. It’s really a weird story, in the sense that they don’t mention any force, just verbal threats. But of course when I got home tonight it was all about looking around the house for marauders and then hearing more of the noise that goes on than usual. But one thing that was comforting to me is that I have neighbors in ten yards (or less) in just about every direction. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but when I think about being in a house where the next physical human is a football field away… well I imagine it would take some getting used to for someone who’s never lived like that.
Probably some of you figure being “out there” is safer, with a lower per capita amount of marauders around. I, on the other hand, have read In Cold Blood. Twice. (Hey, it’s that good.) I think I’ll keep my postage-stamp lot!
