Privacy is Expensive

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.