Busybody: A Confession

I’ll admit it. I’m a busybody.

I drive down my street and wonder if that one house is ever officially going to go on the market, after declaring it is “coming soon” for the better part of a year. I notice when people are working on their houses, or really ought to be working on their houses. If there’s a lot of cars out front I wonder if they are having a party. Or maybe they have relatives visiting.

I do not think anyone owes me the answers to these questions. I do not ask around to try and find out. I am a busybody in my own head. I don’t inflict my overactive curiousity on others.

Years ago I wrote a blog post about houses with multiple cars and how it seemed to me to be sad that we lived in a place where people felt that was necessary. I have recently been hunting for this piece and I can’t find it. I believe that my point was that multiple cars per house was bad for the planet. Dependence on automobiles led to the feeling that everyone must have one: Mom, Dad, all children over the age of sixteen. 

I suspect I thought of it as bit of conspicuous consumption as well. Couldn’t you really make do with fewer cars, I mean - - really?

Over the years I have realized that there is another reason that houses may have multiple cars. They are rentals shared by a number of adults. 

Housing is expensive in Columbia/HoCo. Splitting the cost of renting a house makes it more affordable. Plus, if you are the kind of person who loves grass and trees, a house with a yard is so much more appealing than many apartment communities. Children love playing in the yard. So do pets.

But it is almost impossible to live a car-free life as an adult here. Public transportation is not well developed enough to make that possible. Very few people can walk to work here, either. So, cost-sharing may make housing more affordable, but it’s likely that every renter will need their own car. That’s just the way it is.

I have this gut feeling that the first time I thought about this, way back when, I was really pretty judgy about it. 

Do you all really need all those cars? Maybe you just need to change your mindset.

Maybe I just needed to change mine.

It’s fine to have a natural curiousity about the people in your neighborhood but when you begin to find yourself pontificating based on incomplete knowledge you should probably give yourself an earnest, sit-down lecture about it. (Believe me, I have.)

There are many things that we can do to make Columbia/HoCo a better place to live but I honestly don’t know how we can retrofit it to be less car-centric. I think we need to, for multiple reasons, but it’s a huge task. 

In the meantime, being curious rather than judgemental is probably a good way to go.