Knock Knock

April 14, 2014

Greetings from who’s there,

“When the doorbell rings my dog always thinks it’s for him.”

A dozen years ago or so I was sitting on the floor watching a movie with my kids.  We had a bowl of popcorn between us, clustered together, buttery fingers, transported by whatever animated classic was flickering in front of us.

I was reaching for the bowl when I realized there was an extra head in the crowd.  A little boy, not one of mine, had wandered in and was watching the movie with us.  “Hi.” he said, not tearing his eyes off the Disney creation.  He sat down to eat popcorn. 

He was perhaps three, not worldly enough to have announced his presence at the door. He was old enough to know what matters: there were kids in this house, he was a kid, and so he was welcome.  He was absolutely right.

In the front hallway there is a box on the wall that houses the door chimes, which would make a noise if anyone ever pushed the doorbell in just the right way, with just the right body English, in order to make things work the way Edison intended. 

The bell is rarely rung.  In fact when it does go off, it scares the heck out of me. 

When I was a kid we didn’t use doorbells.  We banged on the door. (Usually the back door) This was the socially acceptable way of declaring your arrival.  Ringing the bell was for company.  And one other activity which I will come back to.

This was the culture of my old neighborhood; principles largely shared among the tightly packed houses, enforced through rigid training by mothers up and down the street.  Reinforced when necessary through admonition; hands on hips, red-faced reprimands, and the occasional corporal punishment.  (Which is how I learned most things.) But the rules about visiting my friend’s house were eventually clear:

Knock on the door and wait patiently. 

When someone comes to the door, politely state your business.

Do not open the screen door or go in the house unless invited.

There were other rules scribbled in the margins, having to do with acceptable hours, (not before dawn or after the streetlights were on) and behavior in the house (mind your p’s and q’s, don’t ask for anything to eat or drink, don’t bounce on the beds to try to touch the ceiling) Once you had established yourself with the house, the rules could be relaxed, but we all understood these were laws that could be tightened at any time.

Until a new boy came to the neighborhood.  He was the No Knock Kid. 

His behavior challenged the status quo.  The culture he was raised in, perhaps in a foreign country, or on Mars, indicated that when one wished to visit someone, one simply walked into the house and did so.  It was revolutionary.  It was like James Dean had come to visit Chandler Street.  (The cool one, not the sausage guy.)

The parents rallied and reinforced the rules but there was a crack in the status quo large enough for us to see other possibilities. 

It was little later that I learned that the culture of my microcosm was not universal.  As I traveled outside neighborhood I learned not everyone knocked and waited.  My friends from the south end did neither.  When they visited a friend’s house, they simply stood outside the house and screamed his name.  If he was home, he yelled back.  If he was not, his parent or smart aleck sister would yell ‘He’s not here.’  Sometimes with editorial like ‘He went to the corner to get more stupid pills’.

I learned that this behavior did not transfer well back to my street.  (Corrected via the hands-on-hips red-faced educational method) 

One thing was true in all the neighborhoods, you didn’t use the doorbell.  The doorbell was for ‘company’.  It was occasionally used by door-to-door salesmen, Western Union, and the police.  But never used by kids.

Except when it was.  When it was just dark enough to hide, one might run up on a front porch, ring the doorbell and then rush off into the bushes to watch the hilarity.  The door opening, the look of incredulity, the disgusted slam of the door.  It was a classic. 

Ding and dash. Ring and run. Ding dong ditch.  I’m not sure if kids today still do this; there is probably some cloud based version of it, or an app they can use.

Kids visited my house for many years and how they got in varied widely.  Some knocked, some walked in, some took off their shoes, some ate out of the fridge.  The most important thing was they knew they were welcome.  The rules of interaction between guest and host at this level are an interesting social commentary.  But I like the innocent approach of the little boy who appeared in my house many years ago, without guile or expectation, or the complex guidelines to guide him.  Just the intuitive sensibility that we all start out with, before we start layering on the rules.  I miss that.  You might want to lock your back door.

Hope this finds you knocking,

David

Copyright © 2014 David Smith