I wholeheartedly believe that fences are offensive. When I
was a child, I would occasionally overhear my mom gripe about the next neighbor
who decided that shielding their yard was an appropriate action to take. “What
are they trying to hide? Do they not like us? Are we the weird neighbors whose
house you can view into and really wish you couldn’t? Oh, I am sure they don’t
like us.” I never fully understood her initial reaction to placing this on our
guilty conscience. Why would someone spend a lump sum of money on identical
strips of treated and shaped wood just because he doesn’t like you? Shouldn’t
we, the problematic family, be the buyers, since we are the cause for the need?
In the backyard of my childhood home, one can count four
different fences, none of which were owned by my family. Considering my
neighbors and I are shared a large grassy suburban plot shaped as a rectangle, without
barriers I could peer into six different sets of windows belonging to different
houses and act as a dramaturge, creating exposition, rising actions and
conflicts of each family’s daily events. Thankfully, two of my neighbors left
their windows for my fictional creations, but the other four robbed me of my
use of imagination only accessible to youth. Initially I was not opposed to fences,
believing the idea behind them is to enclose a space for a large dog, so he can
enjoy the sun on his belly and remain safe while his family was at work. But our
neighbors didn’t have a large dog. How many neighbors of mine had dogs? One,
uno, unus, neighbor even owned a dog, and last time I peered into her window
before the fence went up, I think it was a Chihuahua.
Since the use for the fences was not for the benefit of
animals, the barriers were only productive for one thing- drawing clear distinctions
that my neighbors were greedy assholes- and were protective of their property and
their privacy. But what made them think we wanted their land or lives anyways?
And why in the hell do humans have the self proclaimed right enabling us to
purchase land? Why must we take out loans and go in thirty years of debt just to own or live on a piece of land? Land was here before us, so the
only explanation I have for that question is that things just got a little
fucked up at one point in history, and here we are paying ridiculous amounts of money to someone not even worthy of owning the land in the first place. Fuck. Fences…
I may have had one of those families in which people don’t
want to look through our windows and see what’s unraveling. However, I believe life
in that home was generally boring and slightly predictable- we were the
technology savvy, hard working home of three habitual alcoholics, so why did
that make us no longer worthy of the “no fence” guard? People might have dubbed
us as a strange family, but I, on the other hand, found them fascinating; in return for my daily monotony I created comedy, soap opera and even suspense from their presence. Before the fences, I had my own personal
television in my backyard derived from my neighbors' windows. All I had to do
was turn my attention to another home, and viola! I had changed the channel.
Before the fences I could observe my neighbors working hard
in the lawn, sorting bills in their kitchen dining room, playing softball with
their kids. I could even see Mrs. Bush, when she lived there when her husband
was still alive, helping him persevere after he had his stroke, all while
changing her television to whatever commands he grunted in inaudible tones. After
a hurricane, I could look out in the backyard and immediately know which houses
I was going to first assist in cleanup and to see who had power. My
neighborhood had unity once, before the days of the fences! Alas, things
materialize and change over the course of the years- people come and people go.
Yet, why was my house decided to be the ostracized one, therefore everyone
needed to guard us from looking onto their property? Were we really not worthy
of seeing their land, becoming close, or simply even knowing when they were sad
and needed a tin of freshly baked brownies and a smile? I guess, if one day
curiosity overrules, and they peer over their tall wood cuts surrounding their
properties, they will feel happy to see that my old house has yet to give up, and
a fence still remains unseen.
