Bare windows ask, can you see me now?
Lori Borgman | Monday, Oct. 25, 2010
There is a
TV commercial for one of those home improvement channels that shows a couple
driving down a street at night looking in homes for decorating ideas. A man
inside one of the houses sees the couple looking in and is visibly perturbed.
If the man
doesn’t want people looking in, why doesn’t he have curtains? And why doesn’t
the couple looking for decorating ideas park their car and walk? You can see so
much more that way.
I can see that big open windows would be wonderful -- a lovely
way to bring the outside in. But once it turns dark, why do you want the outside
coming in? Isn’t that why we live inside? To keep the outside out?
Still, I
sometimes wonder if we could be the sort of confident and cosmopolitan type
people who live in houses without window coverings.
Who am I kidding? We could never pull it off.
For starters, we don’t have the wardrobe. In the evenings, I
sometimes go grub. It’s not pretty, but it’s comfortable -- a big pink fuzzy
robe that is 10 years old, adds 40 pounds and sheds like a collie.
Bare windows would also cramp our meal plans. I would no longer
feel free to eat Cheerios for dinner when the husband isn’t home. Your
six-veggie-a-day enforcers would be looking in and judging me. (Hey, the cereal
box says it’s whole grain.)
The husband is not genetically predisposed to tolerating bare
windows. He descends from a long line of security minded people. Family motto:
“Four Generations of Men Lowering and Raising Shades in Sync With the Sun Since
1802.”
Being on constant display works well for goldfish, mannequins in
window displays and zoo animals, but even the chimpanzees have little back rooms
they can slip away to, kick up their feet and floss their teeth in private.
I guess when you live without window coverings you develop an
artificial sense of privacy -- like people in their cars who, although they can
see out, apparently think others can’t see in. “Quit texting! You should have
put that mascara on at home! Use a Kleenex!”
Still, there’s something debonair about not having window
coverings. It’s a daring move. A like it or leave it attitude. It’s a boldness
that shouts to the world, “We’re home, she’s in that ugly pink robe and we don’t
care who sees us!”
I wonder
if the people in houses without curtains aren’t possibly thinner and better
behaved than people that live in houses with curtains. Do they still have
that bowl of ice cream before bed even though strangers might be watching? Do
their kids finish off that 2-liter by drinking straight out of the bottle? Do
they aim aerosol whipped cream directly into their mouths?
I don’t
mind bare windows letting light in, it’s eyeballs in the dark I worry about.
