Boundaries

Eight-foot fences aside, does anyone understand boundaries anymore? Why do people continually look for a way in when they should know better? I remember my mother telling me various things growing up, but one theme of hers was to respect another’s privacy. You never assume anything, she would tell me. You don’t intrude. Ever. Now she may have been a little excessive at times with that, but her point was well made.

I remember attending a picnic at a friend’s home one summer with my family and the side-eye my mother gave someone for asking someone there for tax advice was hilarious. My mother’s side-eyes were famous. He was apparently an accountant, and the person had all sorts of questions. The look on my mother’s face told me everything I needed to know, but I asked her later anyway. I was focused on the watermelon the hostess had turned into a punch bowl.

She explained that it’s not proper to ask someone for free advice at a picnic, or anywhere else for that matter. The proper thing to do would have been to ask for a business card or his phone number so that they could make an appointment to discuss their concerns. I figured that was the case, but I wanted to be sure. The accountant looked uncomfortable when being questioned relentlessly by this person so I’m sure she was right.

We experienced it all the time when we had a business. Folks wanted free advice for this or that, under the guise of picking my husband’s brain. And every time someone would say those words, images of vultures and other carrion birds picking at roadkill would immediately come into my head. After they left, I wondered if my husband had any of his brain left, or had it been picked clean. Decorum is a funny thing and apparently a matter of perspective.

We put up an eight-foot fence to keep both deer, neighbors and other random folks off our property. I’ve come home over the years to find the guy across the street stealing parts off of a truck we owned, kids sitting in the middle of my pasture, kids playing in the irrigation ditch that winds through my property, an idiot with a gun on my front porch, and as of last Friday, a guy from Locate to mark the cable lines near my home. He illegally accessed my supposedly secure property by climbing my eight-foot fence.

According to the utility company that’s been hired to dig the line and replace the cable, the locate guy let everyone know that we denied him access to the property, not that he illegally entered and then didn’t tell us he was here. The problem for him is that I took pictures. And they’re dated. Anyway, we enlightened everyone and I may be contacting the sheriff to let them know what the guy did, just so they know this company has someone like that on their payroll. Of course, there I go assuming again. He may no longer be on their payroll, given the risk he poses.

But you see what I mean about boundaries. All the locate guy had to do was call his boss or the cable company and let someone know he couldn’t get in. Of course, if my cable company had done as I requested, then everyone would have known that they needed to contact me and there wouldn’t have been all this nonsense to begin with.

So now the utility company is here and the digging will begin shortly. The guys seem very nice and I’m happy to get a larger cable coming into my home. And when it’s all said and done, we’ll have to make some decisions about the apparently loosey-goosey way we’re securing our home. Razor wire or hot wire. Ooh..I could do both.

But at the end of the day, if we have to call before we dig, then we need to be able to trust the folks while they’re on our property. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

~Blessings!