In this day and age of red and orange terror alerts, it seems to have become increasingly necessary to forego certain freedoms that we Americans have come to take for granted in an effort to "protect" life itself.
Of course, our government would love to let us keep on believing that nothing has changed, that we have all of the same rights and dignities that we always possessed - except that now it might be Dick Cheney eavesdropping on a phone call instead of the pervert next door. This Privacy Act occurs on a smaller, more personal scale as well. That is to say, we are constantly acting like we are giving other people privacy when, in reality, we're snooping like it's our job.
Have you ever noticed that when you accompany a friend to the ATM and you're having an intense conversation you'll do that exaggerated move where you pull back so that it's not even humanly possible that you could be watching them type their PIN number? And you scream at some outrageous decibel level, "I'M NOT LOOKING. SERIOUSLY, I'M NOT LOOKING!" But somehow you always end up seeing the PIN inadvertently anyway.
The other day, I was doing my laundry completely alone in the laundromat. When I went to move my clothes into a dryer I noticed that all of the available machines were full of other people's clothing. There's something inherently uncomfortable about taking someone else's laundry out. Even though I tried to justify it to myself by sheer virtue of these being public machines, a large part of me was trembling, worrying that some girl was going to walk in while I was holding her red g-string and placing it delicately on the folding table. I'm not sure what's worse: that this actually happened, or that I waited for the girl to come back to see if she was cute.
Sometimes I'll be on a subway sitting next to someone when two seats next to me will suddenly open up. I find that when that happens, I'm always faced with this split second decision to either move one seat over and enjoy my space or stay the course with this deodorant-impaired public transportation rider. Oftentimes it's just a gamble, though, as I've learned when I have excitedly claimed my own personal space on a subway car only to have a guy who is deodorant-impaired and also really tired come and sit next to me. Note to homeless subway riders: You can sleep on my shoulder, but please stop drooling.
Remember land lines? These are the big, plastic things that used to make calls to other people with big, plastic talking machines before they invented cell phones. When I was in high school, my girlfriend and I would always talk on one. Neither of us had our own lines, and so we were faced with constant clicking and hanging up noises from people who were trying to make calls. One night it happened fourteen times. I think my sister was playing a practical joke on me. But as luck would have it, this final time, when I decided I was going to give it to whoever was screwing around on the other line and scream, "Get the f--k off," it was my girlfriend's grandmother. Thankfully she's hard of hearing.
A few years ago, my dad told me about this trick people who hosted parties used to play on their guests when he was growing up. Knowing that it was taboo to look in someone's medicine cabinet when you're in their bathroom, but knowing also that everyone at one time or another fell prey to curiosity, the host would remove all of his bathroom items and in their place, put a plethora of marbles in the cabinet. Then when the marbles fall out, you have proof that the guests were peeking. I tried this once, but my plan fell apart completely. I guess it defeats the purpose if you tell your friend you have a migraine and proceed to ask him to check your bathroom for Tylenol.
I have an iPod, but I don't even really use it that much. Sometimes I'll shut it off but keep my headphones in so people think I'm listening to music when I'm actually listening to their conversations. It works like a charm, because people speak so uninhibitedly when they don't think anyone's listening. Once, though, on the bus I got a little bit excited when two people were talking about the movie "Crash," which I had just seen a few nights before. So, without taking my headphones out, I turned around and interrupted them mid-conversation to say, "Oh, man. I love 'Crash!' 'Crash' is awesome!" When they stared at me awkwardly, I turned back around and murmured to myself, "I'M NOT LOOKING, I'M NOT LOOKING."
Neil Padover is a senior majoring in English. He can be reached at neil.padover@tufts.edu.
