I've spent more than half of my life living in big cities. Living in this environment you start to adapt certain behaviors: Your purse is always clasped closed and it is held close to your person at all times. When walking on the street, you're always acutely aware of all of those in your immediate surroundings and are prepared to defensively act if you are attacked in a neck lock or a forward assault with a weapon. You always lock your car, house or any of your possessions that you want to retain. You approach the world defensively with the assumption that everyone around you is harboring malicious intent. Pure and simply, that is City Living. The minute you let your guard down, you subject yourself to a victimization.I've operated under this premise for so long that I forget that not all parts of the world function the same way. When I take my recycling out to the station in my building, I lock my apartment door. Stupid as it sounds, in the two minutes it will take to walk to the recycling room, some varmit could enter my apartment and lie in wait to take me down. You never know so why take the chance? When I park my car to dash into a store, I lock it and ensure that the I-am-locked confirmation horn sounds. I know its annoying to regular people on the street but I don't want someone to steal away with Angus while I'm in a store buying tampons. It's a learned behavior that will take a brainwashing to undo.
I was talking with a colleague who has a vacation home in Vermont (and who has been feeding my Vermont wanderlust by bringing me copies of those free real estate publications that you find at the grocery store). He rarely locks his doors up there and keeps a spare key under the door mat. When he told me that, I reacted with an appalled horror. I simply couldn't understand the casual approach towards robbery prevention. As I started to go on on why this was a dangerous thing to do, he cut me off by saying, "You've lived in the City too long." I think he's right.
The fact is, I do live in a city. I see the remnants of smashed windows (the residue of the evening's car robberies) every morning when I walk to my garage to collect my car. I know for all the good people in this city, there are a lot of ill-intentioned ones as well who don't think twice about beating a geriatric resident or shooting someone who doesn't surrender their wallet. New York is a much safer place to live in than it was three decades ago, but it still ain't Shangri-La. It will never be.
The question that came to me is this: when I do make the fabled migration to Vermont to ring in my golden years, will I eventually embrace that same kind of trust and safety as the current residents enjoy? I have three locks on my New York apartment door now (above). In Vermont, could I be happy with a door that has one lock that could easily be violated with a sturdy credit card? Could I trust that the people around me are honest and accountable and equally trustworthy? I can't imagine it now. I simply can't.
But I am willing to give it a try.
7 comments:
Umm, I agree, you've lived in the city too long. Here in the north Georgia mountains (?) we only have one copy of the house key. In fact, said key only made it on to a key ring this year because I'm tired of having to try all of the loose single keys in the lock to locate it. The only time we use the key is when we leave town for more than the weekend. We don't lock the cars in the driveway, but I do lock them at the store. Used to be I didn't worry about it because I figured if some never-do-well wanted into the house with 110 lbs of shepard, that was their business. Now we just don't do it out of habit.
My in-laws owned a trailer park on a lake way down south in Texas near the Mexican border. A very small town. I don't recall if they even owned a key for their house, but I do remember that they left the keys for their cars IN THE IGNITION. And the cars were just out there in the open, parked next to the house. That used to blow my mind.
I dunno that I would trust that - a co-worker was telling me about her aunt and uncle who were in their house in the UP of Michigan, and some guy used their key to get into their house, wake them up, threaten them, steal everything, including family heirloom jewelery, and take off. The cops caught him, but in the chase, much of the jewelery was lost or broken. Needless to say they're looking to sell that house and move elsewhere...
My side door that leads into my garage is always unlocked. My sunroom sliding glass door is sometimes unlocked, too.
i moved to VT from SF bay area 7+ years ago. it took me a while to get used to NOT locking the house everytime i left, but it's the norm now. we even leave our cars unlocked with keys in them (!) when we make a stop at the local general store.
i love this area.
I will always lock my door, regardless of where I live. I'm just wired that way. At my new job it's there's this "honor code" thing they have...like they REALLY mean it...whereby they all trust each other. In fact, this semester is the first one where the campus post office has decided to make it mandatory that all po boxes are closed and locked. They used to leave them standing open, kind of to prove the level of trust.
When I leave my office, even to go to the bathroom or the copy machine, I lock it. I'm the only one in the French department who does, but I don't care. They can just look at me funny...that's how I'm wired.
I never lock my door and few in my town do. I never lock my car even when I go to the center. It's a small Connecticut town where many have lived here for generations and practically everyone is related. I made a visit to NYC for the week-end in August and was forced to go into "city mode". I must confess on was on the verge of having a panic attack by the time I left on Sunday. I find it way too time consuming to have to have eyes on all sides of my head. C&W, go to Vermont and breath in some new life. You might even lose your keys in the process.
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