My doorbell doesn’t have a camera attached to it.
There. I said it. Now I suppose I can expect a throng driving by at 2 a.m. They’ll be riddled with bad intentions. (Aren’t they all?) They might take something from my yard or toilet paper the shrubs or otherwise make my life miserable.
I most certainly have just put a target on my house, because I put it out there that I am not surveilling the world while I’m sleeping.
The thing is, I prefer to believe that the world has interesting things going on in the night. I want to pretend there are lovebirds gazing at the full moon over the river across from the park. Maybe a hospital shift worker stops next to the park to decompress before going home to jump in the shower and wash off Covid.
Or, there are hooligans out there looking for their next score. (Is that how you even say that now, or did I pick that up from a crime show?) Or lost souls are trying to find themselves. Or a homeless guy is looking in a dumpster for a good enough pair of jeans, that were too small for the guy whose house is a stone’s throw from that dumpster.
I’m not a fool. I know that bad things happen out there. I also know that good things happen out there. Whatever it is, it is none of my business. Everything that happens outside my door is not for me to know. Just like everything that happens inside my house is not for the world to know.
I have my protected bubble, secured by three locks at both the front and back doors. My only car is safely parked in the garage. Any yard thing that matters (like the gargoyle that used to sit on the front step) is barricaded by both locked gates and the fence in the back. If it’s in the front yard and someone wanders by in the middle of the night and decides they need it, they can have it. Lighten my load. Go ahead. (They pinched the antique bike that was too small to ride and not sturdy enough to prop up a pot of pansies. I learned my lesson. If I love it, it’s not out front. That’s why I moved the gargoyle.)
My neighbors have those doorbell cameras. At first, I thought they were geniuses for getting them. I even entertained the thought of getting on Amazon and signing up. (I don’t patronize Amazon any more, and I’ve changed my mind about a doorbell camera.)
I am also a member of the Doorbell-Camera Neighbor group text. (I capitalized those words because my neighbors have an agenda and they sound official.) Lucky me.
I am getting too much information from this group. I’ll be minding my own business, planning out my day, and get a text full of gasping emojis and shouting exclamation points asking if anyone knows who this is in the video that a doorbell camera picked up.
One time it was a young couple smoking in their parked car. They were probably listening to music, getting high, talking to each other and praising the moon. It felt like an invasion of their privacy. Their moment was caught on two cameras that belonged to complete strangers.
Another time it was broad daylight, and a doorbell camera caught a yellow vest-wearing fellow, who had the nerve to walk across the neighbor’s grass. I pointed out that the fellow was the meter reader. I got a text back that said, “Oh, sorry. I’m glad I asked you.” I wrote back, “Yeah, so am I.”
I lied.
One of these vigilant neighbors checks into a site that lists daily/nightly crimes that happen all over the city. She also scours Facebook for posts mentioning neighborhood crime activity. Between her doorbell camera, the Facebook posts, and the city crime site, she fabricated an amazing story that potentially connected the car (spotted by her camera at 2 a.m.) and a Facebook report of a person shining a flash flight down an alley 6 blocks away, at 4 a.m.
I try to be helpful and suggest that the events are unrelated. “Maybe the person with the flash light is looking for her cat,” I said. (I’ve looked for my cat in the night, only to discover it locked in the neighbor’s garage, the next day.)
“Maybe the two in the car are young lovers who work the late shift at a drive-in and they’re hatching a plan about how to get out of this town before it eats them alive,” I said. (Because I’ve been there, too. I know that every kid in a car is not gonna steal the stuff on your front step. Most of those kids don’t even look at your house. They have their own stuff to deal with.)
I want to scream at my friendly doorbell-camera neighbors, and tell them that they are suffering from information overload. I want to say, “You don’t need to know all of this stuff!” I’d include a hands-on-my-hips emoji, if only I could find one.
I could duck out of being in the group text, but I see that there might be a benefit to being neighborly. (When I learn what that benefit is, I’ll let you know.)
What brought them to the point of suspecting the worst of everyone? When they write the text that accuses the kids in the car (or the flash light-carrying alley walker) of being up to no good, don’t their stomachs hurt? Don’t they feel bad for making those judgments?
In defense of the doorbell camera neighbors, they do have stuff – campers, trailers, extra cars, ATVs – to keep secure. Have they forgotten what it’s like to not have everything they ever wanted?
Us, well, we don’t have all that stuff.
Am I the only one who connects the dots?
You buy the things, and then you start worrying that everyone wants your things. Then, you become preoccupied with making sure that no one will ever get your things, or hurt your things. Can you ever go camping without worrying that your house is left vulnerable? (Well, you can if you ask the nice lady across the street to keep an eye on your house. Where is that damn emoji?)
Now, I am the one who is judging them, and my stomach does hurt a bit for doing so.
Maybe they are coping – the best they can – just like the rest of us. Could be they are controlling what they can control in this time when we have so little control over anything at all.
And so I stay in the group text, and I banter back and forth about the comings and goings in the neighborhood. And I also agree to keep an eye on things when they take their toys and head out of town. As for me, I refuse to buy a camera. I will go on believing that good, unusual, private (maybe even magical) things go on in the night.
I imagine that you also connect these same dots on a macroscopic cultural/political scale.
I thought you might.