We Won't Hurt You: Mistaken Identities, Drunk Attacks & a Question

A kitchen fashioned for a rainy cookout from my car

Drunks knocked relentlessly on my window. 1:36 a.m. I pulled the sleeping bag low enough to look their way and tried to make sense of what was going on.

“What is he doing in there?” a girl asked, eyes and mouth gaping in my direction. Another staggered over to the driver’s side and tried the handle. “I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk. Get out.”

“Tempting,” I thought.

The sound of vomiting erupted from somewhere in the mix. A muscle-bound man in a black wife-beater crouched between my car and theirs, steadying himself with a fourth person while their bodies attempted to rid themselves of the poison they had ingested at some point earlier in the evening.

Many more questions and accusations were fired my way while they continued in their attempt to get in or get me out. Finding I could not talk myself out of this situation, I turned the keys that waited in the ignition and left them stumbling in their mess.

A quiet dirt lot just past an established neighborhood gave me hope for sleep. I snuggled back down into my Columbia sleeping bag and dozed off again.

My view was different the next time I awoke. 6:23 a.m. The sky had a pale hue and crew of birds surrounded my car. They were much less frightening to awake to, though no less noisy. I stared out from under my bag, allowing only my face to feel the still-chilled air leftover from the night. Spruce limbs reached into the early morning, interrupting up the otherwise clear sky.

This was more like it.

I thought back to when I had 500 square feet of living space and one lockable door to the outside world. It was situated on the top floor in the historic downtown neighborhood of a capital city. I had views of the mountains and the entire valley floor. My balcony was lined with a garden I had planted and my gear had its own closet. There was room to bake and cook food for friends. And I had a bed. A real bed. Queen size —more than enough room for a single person.

A cherry tree bloomed outside my window each spring, filling the pane with pink etherealness. I knew my neighbors; we borrowed cups of sugar and bike gear from each other. Depending on the season, I walked or rode my 1984 Schwinn to school, work and the grocery store. Trails crisscrossed the foothills behind my home giving residents a place to run, mountain bike, or quietly enjoy a city sunset.

There was the other side. Being downtown meant bus stops, late night convenience stores and “undesirables” looking for handouts, some strung out on whatever.  The three converged on a nearby corner within a stone’s throw from my otherwise peaceful habitation. My apartment occasionally felt the ills of this situation. Thieves attempted to take my bikes, strangers stared in at me from my balcony window, and late-night knocks at the door would be followed by delusional but persistent demands for people who I was not or for the drugs I did not possess.

Those events were not unlike what interrupted my sleep two nights ago. The difference is in one living situation the occurrences have been rare; the other attracted them much more frequently.

So which is the safer option? Hold on to your steering wheel: my life in the car grabs the title for least amount of insane visitors. Surprised? I was. Then I thought about a few things. It might be that the crazies, in the midst of their wrong-doings, are halted by the sight of someone who has clearly made a home out of a mobile unit and reasons (with whatever capacity they have left to do so) that this person might be more dysfunctional than they. On the other hand, someone living between four walls conforms at least some norm of society, therefore having a portion of rationality. These people are less threatening and thus easier targets.

Another theory: it may be that the crazies see someone sleeping in their car and feel kinship with that person; an instant bond that clears them from the path of danger whereas the home dweller who has a balcony garden and a lockable front door is clearly living the high life and deserves to be brought down a peg or two through drug-induced threats and stolen items.

I have yet to answer the question of why living in a car has granted me less visits from the insane than when I lived in a stationary home. I’m not exactly rushing to devote brainpower to solving the case. One thing I can pinpoint: the unknown or the unusual appears to make a thing “unsafe” by society’s standards. A single girl traveling and living in a car is dangerous, yet no one batted an eye about my living in a downtown apartment.

What really sparks my curiosity is why we are so fearful of what we’re not used to. Individually, I understand the mechanics behind it- it’s a form of self-preservation meant to keep us away from harm. But as a society I don’t get it. We go so far as to even try to keep others from straying off the path.  

I’m curious: have any of you thought about doing something unusual only to have it talked down? Did you go ahead or get dissuaded? Results? And finally, why do you think society is so worried about the unusual?