I’ve heard it said most of my life and I kind of understand it, or I thought I did. I live in a gated community, who’d have thunk it. I guess gates and locks are related in some way. Maybe, like so many of us down south, they share ole uncle Fred who only shows up in the middle of the night, who is the only person we know that can still find moonshine and does find it on a regular basis. If he’d have gone to work for the revenuers all those years ago, instead of the dog pound, he’d have single handedly eradicated illegal liquor from the mountains. Alas poor ole Fred was a consumer and is to this day.
Anyway back to those gates, you know they don’t keep the bad guys out right? Bad guys, not being employed have all the time in the world to sit and wait or to circle the drive until someone else punches in the code, then simply slip in behind them. Pizza delivery people and we know all of them are stellar individuals, do it on a regular basis. UPS and Fedex guys have it down too. In most cases you simply hit buttons until someone in an apartment lets you in. It’s my experience that gates are only there to harass the residents of such places. Well they do serve one other purpose; they are targets for moving vans and other idiots.
Gates actually work less often than they do. Most of the time they have been hit by someone who is too stupid to drive or be a respectable criminal. They stand open for weeks at a time, it’s the only time residents get a break and can come and go without getting knots in their stomachs. I have this unnatural fear they will close on my ole ugly car as I pass through. I’ve seen it happen. My wife actually has gate anxiety. Her van is much prettier than my car, guess she has the right. She will visibly flinch when we pass through them if they make the slightest little bit of noise. I’ve seen her recoil when the wind moved them a little while we were trying to escape our neighborhood. Don’t worry she’s in counseling.
So gates are there, like so many things today, to harass, intimidate and otherwise annoy the average American. Oh let us not forget, to elevate the cost of living, rent is higher in a gated community. I’m overjoyed when I don’t have to punch in a code to get to my house, a code which only works about half the time, by the way. My wife is mortified and can barely sleep until they are repaired. She is firing off e-mails to management and trying to fortify the house. She is sleeping with a butcher knife on the bedside table and casting a suspicious eye on all those walking around for exercise at night.
There is a well worn path through the woods from the shopping center next door, actually two. Some people with fancy cars will walk rather than play gate roulette. In the last few months I’ve seen them folded, spindled and mutilated. What exactly is spindled and how could it happen to a government check? Never the less it’s happened to our gates. I think the gates on gated communities are much like the Federal Government. They stoically stand there; cost us money, annoy us every time they have the chance and all the while give us a false sense of security.
I expect to come out one morning and find the thieves have taken the gates. Think about it, they are probably the most expensive thing about their respective neighborhood. Just imagine how much rent could decrease if they didn’t need repairing three times a month. Holy cow, a pool is just a hole in the ground to pour money into, but I never knew it about gates. The pool and gates account for half out rent, I bet.
So someday soon the gates will take up residence on a solitary piece of country road. They will stand next to a mailbox sitting on top of a beer keg. The driveway behind them will stretch back into the darkness of the woods, for far too long and will end at and old camper that wants to be an old trailer when it grows up. It will be surrounded by a bunch of old cars that want to star in Wrong Turn 15 when they grow up. The little cylinders that open and close them will be replaced by a redneck girl, with tight jeans and no teeth, who’ll jump from the truck to open them when needed. Okay that’s their dream, the reality is, they will end up at Billie bobs scrap metal and package store.
No comments:
Post a Comment