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Thinking inside the box
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Thinking inside the box
  A lot of people are looking for ways to feel safe these days. It’s the news: every day you hear that your money’s not safe, your job’s not safe, your mortgage isn’t safe, your children aren’t safe. You’re not safe anywhere – if tornadoes don’t get you, swine flu will. I’m guessing if you asked most people what would make them feel safe, they’d say money. Money does insulate you from an array of troubling inconveniences – the more you have, the thicker your insulation. But in my experience, it doesn’t enhance the sense of safety.  In my experience, the more money you have, the more you worry about it. If you lose all your money (also within my experience), you stop worrying about it – every silver lining has a cloud, you know. Losing all your money is like that first ding in a new car – once it happens, you can stop parking four miles from every store to try and prevent it. It’s done, you can relax. Perhaps you’ve noticed already that I’ve been talking about feeling safe, not being safe. I don’t think there’s any such thing as being safe. You can pass up extra-dangerous activities like running across busy streets without looking, or annoying large wild animals. You can lock yourself in a small room with no windows. Things can still happen to you.  But feeling safe is possible. Years ago when the Houston Police Department was being hailed across the nation for pioneering neighborhood-oriented policing, hundreds of studies were done on its effects. Each report said the same thing: what NOP was marvelous at was reducing the perception of crime. Not reducing crime, but the perception of crime. If you think that makes the program a sham, it doesn’t. People who fear crime fear going to work, going shopping, taking vacations, doing business. A pervasive fear of crime could cause a vibrant city to grind to a halt. By reducing the fear of crime, NOP made people feel safer, so they could get on with their lives.  Feeling safe is important, and wanting to feel safe is instinctive: children know hundreds of ways to make themselves feel safe, from thumb-sucking to hiding under their beds. When I was little, I felt safe in small, enclosed spaces. No claustrophobia here. My safety zones of choice were boxes. Any box large enough for me to fit into was good – furniture and appliance boxes were wonderful. There was a water heater box that I really loved.  When I moved into a new box, I took supplies. Graham crackers, mostly. Sometimes a pillow. Sometimes I could close the box flaps for complete privacy, but even in an open-ended box, doors were understood - mom knocked on my box before she talked to me. When there was no box around, I would sometimes empty the wooden trunk that was my toy box, and play in there. When it was upright and I sat in it, it was a boat. Sometimes I turned it on its side, propped up the lid, and crawled in – then it was a cave. There weren’t any caves where I grew up. I always wanted a cave. The bathroom, being small and having the only interior door in the house that locked, was a favorite safe place. Unfortunately, our house only had one, and it’s hard to develop a feeling of safety when the rest of your family is outside forming a mob with torches if you don’t come out right away.  Although fear of the dark is common among children, darkness made me feel safe. I reasoned that if I couldn’t see the monsters, they couldn’t see me. Bed made me feel safe, too. Bedcovers, specifically. Even on the hottest nights, before the advent of air conditioning at our house, I had to be covered at least up to my ears. Everybody knows that if your ears aren’t covered, wolves chew them off. An aunt and uncle I spent a lot of time with had a storm cellar dug into the side of the hill on which their house sat. I loved that storm cellar. I begged to go to it as often as I thought I could get away with it. If it sprinkled, I suggested we all go to the storm cellar. My aunt and uncle, being the wonderful people they were, would gather supplies and trudge down the hill to spend the night on cots in a concrete room.  Here’s the funny part: When I was little, and finding places that made me feel safe, it never occurred to me to check that our doors were locked (they never were, at least not until I was 12, but that’s another story). I was only concerned with feeling safe, you see. People get older, and more complicated. Their fears change, and so do the things that make them feel safe. What I’m saying is, if the news keeps on the way it’s going, I’m gonna need a way bigger box.  |
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