Article Contributed on: 6/18/2008 1:00:06 PM
The suburbs make me grind my teeth.
Look out your window. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor (the middle class is fast dissolving with the aging baby boomers). Unless you live on the edges of town near the llama farms or ranches owned by people rich enough to burn their money on horses, you'll see standardized streets lined with consistently sized sidewalks and gutters.
Here, contractors mass-produce subdivisions and try to cover up this sameness with gaudy options to extend or invert doors, garages, and etcetera on new homes. Homogenization Owners Associations, otherwise known as H.O.A.'s, dictate the appropriate colors for dwellings' siding and trim.
They tell people what trees to plant and how long their grass should be. Best of all, these organizations charge those same suburbanites exorbitant amounts for stealing their rights as property owners under the pretense that they'll see substantial future cash returns for stifling their expression.
Or, if you're like me, you live in an apartment and there are very few choices involved whatsoever. You wake up every morning in a tackle box for humans.
Yet, amid all this sameness, my enthusiasm for walking only grows. How do I keep from plunging into Plum Creek from the despair of tediously traipsing through this grid of doll houses?
I find the byways.
When I started walking, I had some fears to overcome. I liked to stay inside the presumed safety of my standing and rolling boxes as I watched or listened to other electric boxes that told me all about how scared I should be because the world was horrible.
Dogs, criminals, wild-cats, and horrid monsters from the abyss haunted my imagination each day when I set out on foot across busy roads to work. I kept to the main streets so some terrorist or werewolf didn't suck me into the shadows and eat my soul.
Fortunately, I learned that all my fears about the outside were unfounded.
Yes. Things can hurt you outside. But, if you really think about it, life inside our boxes can be much more dangerous. Over 40,000 people die from automobile accidents every year in the U.S.
Heart attacks, cancers, and strokes are the leading causes of death in this country. A meteorite could bullet through your roof. A tornado could tear your walls apart, lift you into the sky, and drop you off in Kansas (a hellish fate).
It would seem that sitting on your rear and watching T.V. aren't exactly safe activities either. I think unfamiliarity is the true root of our outdoor phobias.
People become reliant on their routines. They think cozy familiarity means safety. Nestled inside their climate houses or cars, they become afraid to do novel things and experience new environments.
They don't realize that their inaction also amounts to a surrender to the dull, monotonous life. I know. I used to be that way until my forays into side streets, alleyways, and open space trails opened my eyes to the refreshing difference outside the mechanistic grind of suburban life.
Now, even standardized subdivisions serve as jumping off points for new adventures on foot. While walking each day, I see a new tree, smell a flower I never knew existed, or feel the cool wind flowing across my in skin in some unique way.
No dusk or dawn is ever the same. The sky shows a different shade of blue from hour to hour. And I never would've noticed any of this while looking through a screen in a box.