Relative Safety
Posted
November 27, 2006 at
7:19 pm by
Stacy
A few months after we bought my Suburban, I was driving around at night and felt the need to hit the automatic door lock. It was dark and I didn’t want to take my eyes off of the road, but I couldn’t figure out which end of the oblong button to hit. Both ends, when pushed, made an identical sound. I guess locking and unlocking sounded the same to me at the time. One end was smooth and the other end had raised lines which, I assumed, was the part of the button to press in order to keep myself safe inside the car.
When I got home my husband got a flashlight and pointed out to me that the raised lines were for unlocking the car. I was momentarily confused. Wouldn’t one naturally feel around for the braille-like end of the button in order to lock the doors against external dangers? He told me that, according to most people’s way of thinking, the danger lay in being locked inside a car that was either submerged in water, on fire, or on the verge of exploding after impact. A passenger or driver needed to be able to feel for and find that button in order to escape the car, rather than be sealed inside it. Certainly the car makers felt the same way he did and the fact that he and I viewed danger in such drastically different ways gave me pause.
Though I am not a very traditional female, I was, as the oldest of three daughters, raised to be just such a person. For better or for worse, my upbringing taught me that dangers lay in the external world and safety was to be found while locked inside one’s home or…while driving around at night…inside the car. My husband, the oldest of three sons, told me that it was the ability to escape the car, or any other dangerous situation, that made the most sense to him and…obviously…everyone else who makes cars.
I admit, it makes complete sense to me now, but I’m still amazed at my knee-jerk reaction to the concept of danger, how it comes to us and which way is best to find safety or refuge. Is this a male/female thing? Or just a symptom of the way I was raised? I still think it’s important to be able to lock your doors quickly and it’s also crucial to be able to flee the car at a moment’s notice. But, in an emergency when one acts by instinct and under stress, how are we supposed to tell the difference between the act of locking or unlocking the car? I mean…back in the day it was easy to tell. The knob was either up or it was down. Am I the only person who thinks about this stuff?
Tags: door-locks, emergencies, safety |
9 Responses to “Relative Safety”
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1. Prescott said:
November 27, 2006 @ 11:38 pm
I don’t know if it’s a male/female thing in general, but I seem to think more about how to react to an emergency than how to prevent the emergency in the first place. Guess that somewhat falls in line with your husband’s thinking.
My paranoid quirk is that if my wife is 30 minutes late and I can’t reach her on her cell, I have to physically restrain myself from starting to call area hospitals and police.
2. Jessica said:
November 28, 2006 @ 7:43 am
Well I’m afraid of the internal and external, so I’m a mess all the way around.
I do think fear and safety are products of our environment, our gender, how we were raised and our experiences. How could it not be?
Obviously, as a female, I fear walking alone at night more than a man might. Also, growing up, I was always told a locked door only keeps an honest man out. I still believe that, however, after living in a huge city for so many years and driving around in dangerous neighborhoods, that theory just didn’t seem as sound as it did out in the woods. It’s all relative.
3. Arabella said:
November 28, 2006 @ 8:33 am
Hmmm. Food for thought. I’m very pro-locking things. I think, in general, that women are more pro-locking things than men. I also think that, even though we’re considered the less violent sex, plenty of us have an innate willingness to flail about and/or break things in an emergency. For example, if I were locked in a car, I wouldn’t hesitate to try to break a window.
4. V-Grrrl said:
November 28, 2006 @ 1:48 pm
My husband is a neurotic locker. We’ve always lived a white bread suburban existence, and yet he locks everything all the time, convinced we’re in danger.
In Virginia, he would chastise me for not having the doors DEADBOLTED when I was at home during the day with the kids (they were locked at the door knob, but not bolted). He locked the car inside the locked garage and hated the fact that I kept my purse inside the car. He hated to have windows open in the house and wouldn’t go to bed at night with a window open anywhere. I have no idea why he’s so convinced someone is always lurking just outside the door ready to slit our throats. It makes me nuts–not just dealing with the locks but with his paranoia.
The irony? Now we live in a house with an alarm system. I like to always set the alarm when we leave the house because there have been seven robberies in the neighborhood in the last year. My husband? Sometimes he sets it, more often he does not!
5. Annie said:
November 28, 2006 @ 2:35 pm
My Dad was a cop, so I’m aware of the dangers within and without. I also grew up in suburban New York, so I believe in locking everything. My husband, raised outside St Louis, does not. I can’t even get him to carry a damned house key most of the time. So, rather than locking him out and incurring his wrath, I don’t lock the doors as often as I would like. He did give me a hard time a few years ago about locking the doors when I was in the apartment until we watched a local news story about a guy walking into unlocked apartments during the day and raping women. He then agreed the doors were better locked.
I also lock the car doors because my kid sister once fell out of the car from the seat next to me. Traumatic. It’s also harder to carjack someone with locked doors.
6. Platypus said:
November 28, 2006 @ 6:36 pm
I was brought up to lock everything, all the time. Doors and windows even when inside the house, the car when I’m driving and even my phone and PC workstation every time I leave my desk. My sister on the other hand, routinely goes on holiday and although she locks her front door, isn’t remotely fussed that the back door’s unlocked. I think it is more of a general female thing but it’s also a personality thing.
7. mothergoosemouse said:
November 28, 2006 @ 8:28 pm
My oldest and dearest friend always commented about how we locked ourselves IN our house. She’d try to exit through our back door, and I’d have to hand her the key for the deadbolt.
At home, I almost always remember to make my rounds before bed, locking all the doors. You’d think it would be Kyle’s job, but I guess I’m the paranoid one.
I’ve actually thought about the car windows too, especially if the car was submerged in water. Would the power windows short out? What about the locks? I trust that the car manufacturers have thought of such things, but that doesn’t stop me from wondering now and then.
8. Ortizzle said:
November 28, 2006 @ 10:38 pm
A female thing? Yeah, I think women are naturally more defensive in that respect because most of us are physically more vulnerable, particularly if we haven’t had any self-defense training in the martial arts. Personally I am paranoid as hell, but that’s probably from being dragged from a moving car by purse-snatchers who nearly ran over my head, and held up at knife point at an ATM. Both instances ocurred in broad daylight. I don’t wanna tell ya how I would feel about finding myself lost in a dicey neighborhood at night.
So.. personally, I can say that regardless of how much sense it might make to leave the doors unlocked in case of an emergency, my fear of being car-jacked or worse wins out every time.
9. Mommy off the Record said:
November 29, 2006 @ 8:19 pm
My car door won’t even open from the outside anymore because it broke. We always have to lean over to open the passanger door from the inside. Sometimes I think the old-fashioned locks weren’t only easier to use, but they worked better!