Through a Stranger's Door

Tonight’s story came to me this afternoon as I was driving home. I’d been over to my daughter’s apartment to feed (and love) her cats.

On the way home (and unfamiliar with the area), I had a question. I figured I’d ask someone at the next stop light.

But as much as I tried to get someone’s – anyone’s – attention, every last Infinity, Lexus, Mercedes and Honda had all the windows rolled up (and most of them darkly tinted.) 

And not one of them looked to the left or right.

A few were on cell phones, one or two fidgeted with radios, and the rest just stared straight ahead.

Many of them anxiously drumming on their steering wheels.

I made eye contact briefly with one woman who quickly looked away as I smiled at her and raised a finger to get her attention.

Now if you bear with me, I’d like to shift gears and tell you a short story from my childhood. (That’s where the moment of not being able to make eye contact with anyone through their rolled up windows took me.)

I was probably eleven or twelve at the time. It was dinner time and I was headed home from my friend’s house – about a mile and a half. The road meandered along the coastline eastward. For the first third of a mile, water-front homes dotted the coast between the road and the ocean.

I always felt fairly comfortable walking along this short stretch of road. If anything went wrong, I could shout out to the home owners or just run down to the beach.

It was the last part of the road that always made me very nervous. Over a mile of deserted road with no homes (or structures of any sort) within ear shot. And a good quarter mile of it ran along a steep cliff, with absolutely nowhere to go if you suddenly needed to leave the road.

Often I’d get lucky and catch a ride with someone heading home from work. I knew most of the people who lived out on our lightly populated end of the island. And if I didn’t know them, they knew my dad. 

So often I’d have someone pick me up and give me a lift.

But I didn’t accept a ride from everyone who stopped to offer one. I don’t know how, but somehow I had a “creep radar” that let me know when to accept a ride and when not to.

But I always feared being on that long stretch of abandoned road when a creepy driver came along. It terrified me.

And my fear got even worse when a pedestrian was killed on that cliffside stretch. They painted a bold, yellow outline around the dead body that stayed there for years.

Well, on this particular day, I was walking along the road, heading home. Usually, as I neared the last house, I would glance more and more often over my shoulder, hoping no cars were coming.

It was a long stretch of straight road and I could see any car coming a quarter mile away.

As I started up the rise to the last house, I glanced back and saw a car coming from way back behind me. I slowed my pace, so that it would pass me before I got to the top of the hill and that last house.

But the slower I got, the slower the car behind me seemed to go.

He pulled alongside me about the third to the last house and leaned out his window to offer me a ride.

Now mind you, they drive on the left side of the road there. And I was walking along the left side of the very narrow road. So he could literally reach out his hand and touch me.

I politely declined his ride and then nervously continued on, looking straight ahead.

Again, he asked me to get in.

I told him, “No, thank you. I live right up here,” pointing vaguely ahead.

“No you don’t,” he said, refuting my statement. By now he’d slowed to a mile or so an hour and was leaning out his window. My creep meter was on full blast!

“Yes, I do,” I lied, hoping that would scare him off.

“Where?” he asked, knowing full well that just over the rise was more than a mile of house-less-ness. And he could tell by the fear in my eyes that I knew too.

“No, really,” I insisted. “I live right up here,” I said pointing at the last house (at the top of the rise.)

I hoped that would send him on his way, but he knew I was lying, so he continued to drive along beside me at a snail’s pace.

“I do,” I insisted again. “That’s my house!”

But by now, we’d reached the last house and he called my bluff. He stopped his car as we reached the short driveway. And I panicked. What in the world would I do now?!

And at that moment I decided I had no other choice.  I would just have to walk up to the front door and let myself into the house. I prayed desperately as I crossed the stretch of drive between the road and house that the door would be unlocked.

If I got to the door and had to go in, I’d just die if it was locked. He’d know I was lying.

As I reached the front porch, I glanced back over my shoulder again. He sat there, leering at me. I felt very much like a mouse watching a snake about to strike. He would devour me just as completely as that snake.

So, with no other choice, I crossed that concrete porch and reached for the door knob of a stranger's house.  

I glanced over my shoulder one last time, but the man continued to sneer at me lecherously.

I had no choice. I turned the doorknob and walked in to that completely unfamiliar house, praying no one was home!

And I walked right in on the home owners sitting around the dinner table. They all looked up at me, startled, needless to say!

Horrified and terribly embarrassed, I immediately began to babble incoherently. I knew what I meant to say, but was sure the words were not coming out in anything remotely close to understandable English.

I pointed back over my shoulder toward the door (which I had closed behind me) and tried to tell them about the man in the car. But I burst into tears about then and all chances of them understanding anything I said went out the door (if you will excuse the pun.)

The father got up and went to look out the front door. He got there just as the creepy man sped away.

The wife, bless her heart, grabbed another plate and told me to come join them for dinner. I politely declined, eager to leave and hopefully pretend this never happened.

The father asked me, wasn’t I one of the Carson kids? I somehow indicated that that was correct. And he got his keys and took me out to his car and drove me home.

I have only a hazy memory of events after walking in, disrupting their dinner and bursting into tears. But, fortunately, they knew my dad, and were kind enough to take me home.

Now what, you might ask, does this have to do with commuters driving along with their windows up?

It’s the way I pretty much knew that the door to that house would be unlocked, whether anyone was home or not.

Our house, just west of the yacht club, was never ever locked. I don’t think it could even be locked.

I am trying to count in my head the number of outer doors we had. The lengths of the entire north and east sides of the courtyard were back to back double doors. Technically, there were no walls. It was just a bank of doors.

I think we must have had sixteen doors opening out of the house – many of them double doors. And not a single one of them was ever locked in all the time I lived there.

People just didn’t lock their doors. And like their doors, people were so much more open then too. Life was wide open and easily shared.

With all the open doors (both physical and figurative) life was so much simpler. People looked out for each other. They smiled and waved out their car’s (open) window at anyone that they passed on the road.

And people gave terrified strangers who walked into their house, interrupting their dinner, an offer of food and/or a safe ride home, thinking nothing of it.

I miss those days. Days when people left their keys in their cars, didn’t tint their windows, and drove with open windows. (I don’t even know if the windows on my dad’s Volvo even rolled up!)

Days when people looked out for their neighbor’s children as they would their own. 

I missed the openness and neighborliness of that simpler time.