Fences

I grew up in a world without fences. The large field behind our house, which really backed up to three houses had not even a shadow to show where a property line ended and another began.

I don’t like fences. They make it hard to run.

Once when I was small I did 700 somersaults in a very straight line across the back yard for no particular reason. I can’t imagine a way that a fence could have crossed that field and not interrupted that 700 somersault record. I think it’s a matter of priorities—breaking somersault recording seems inherently superior to maintaining fences to me.

“Fences make good neighbors,” they say. I say keep me away from that neighborhood please. If I need a fence to communicate where things begin and end with another person, I think I’d rather live someone where else.

I have a high level of tolerance and lots of room for differences. If my neighbor makes even the slightest room for a flower or two that happens to grow over the property line, I think we’ll be fine neighbors without fences. Besides, I’ve hardly met any of my neighbors anywhere I’ve lived anyway. So I think they’re safe.

Fences scare me just a little I think. They give me the impression that someone needed to draw a line in the sand. They say, “This is mine and not yours.” Fences keep something out or keep something in. I don’t like things that separate. Even if someone leaves the fence open for me, I know that it’s closed for someone else. I know that once it was closed for me too and that could be again. No, I don’t like fences. I bet I didn’t like playpens either.

Oh, I understand in places where houses are one on top of another that fences are the only way that people can have privacy. They’re almost a necessity. Fences serve a function something like clothes. That’s something different. I can even allow for big, beautiful mansions that need fences for security from the stalking masses. Those are for protection. I don’t want some Hollywood celebrity kidnapped because his fence was missing.

But the rest of us don’t really need to mark our territory with bricks, wood, and stone walls. Do we? We could use flowers, and hedges, and trees. They’re not really fences. They might branch out and actually bring us together. We could trade cut flowers. Blackberry bushes are fun. While we picked blackberries, we might even talk to each other and eat a few together.

Okay. So it was just an idea.

—me strauss Letting me be