I had a job recently putting up a partition fence between two townhouses (made of 100% cedar, by the way, the most affordable, naturally bug and rot resistant wood), which made me question… why do we have fences, people?
Sure, I understand a chain-linked fence or a short fence if you have a dog and don’t want Killer running into the street and getting nailed by a car or mauling the neighbor’s kids. But… a privacy fence?
Partition fence I put up. Such quality craftsmanship
I think they’re B.S. They divide us, they make us unsociable and even more “in our own little worlds” than we already are. It’s like everyone’s putting up these big privacy fences these days so we don’t have to socialize and talk with our neighbors anymore or get to know each other. Instead, we get home from work and get wrapped up in our TVs — or – we get wrapped up in texting/facebooking and telling everyone how social we are, instead of going outside and actually being social.
Heck folks, I even have the neighbor from hell, who I really don’t get along with. But I still had hope that somehow we could work things out. But what did the guy do? Put up a big, ol’ privacy fence and cut off any chance we had of mending our fences (haha).
A different neighbor of mine got mad a few months back that I cut back some of her giant bushes that were draping into my yard. Did I make a stink? Did I put up a privacy fence so I never have to be a grownup and deal with her again? No. I apologized to her.
I was legally allowed to trim those bushes, but I apologized to her and said I didn’t mean to be a dick, I hadn’t thought she’d mind. And guess what happened? We’re friends now! All it took was a little niceness and sociability — being adults and actually talking about it. Not a privacy fence.
We build all sorts of “fences” in our lives with people, but do we have to build real privacy fences too? We need to start breaking them all down.
Except the chain linked one that keeps Killer in your own yard. Keep that one up.
