The Long Road

08/01/2003 Archived Entry: "fencing"

We live in a new neighbourhood; our backyard is connected to those of all the houses on our block so that it forms a large field. No fences have been put up to separate the yards, until now. I personally thought that it was really cool to have a giant field as a backyard.

The thing that I’ve noticed is that all the houses putting up fences seem to be of some ethnic minority. (generalizations ahead!) Most of the Caucasian families seem to have gotten to know each other and frequently hang out in each other’s backyards. This is perhaps because they hang out a lot in their backyards or because they all have little kids running around in the grass and have gotten to know each other through their children. We don’t really hang out back there (perhaps because it’s intimidating that they all know each other or because we don’t have any little kids?) and neither, does it seem, do the other ethnic families. So maybe it’s this “exclusion” or maybe they just want some privacy but for whatever reason fences are going up.

Interesting thing about fences, if you want a fence around your yard but your neighbour doesn’t then you have to pay for all of it (obviously) and the fence has to be built explicitly on your own property instead of straight down the middle. In this case, this means that the fence is built three inches inside the border of your yard. Of course this means that if you decide that you never want a fence but all those around you build one then not only will you have a fence around your yard for free but you also get an extra 3 inches of space on each side! Maybe this is what all the Caucasian families are holding out for? Suckers that we are, we decided to split with our neighbours.

"Fences make good neighbours."

Replies: 7 comments

Wow! I never thought about it that way. Fences could be an interesting topic for an anthropology research!

I think this is one of your best post yet, thai! (but it might only be the little social sciences guy in me who speaks -feel free to imagine him in super deformed-)

Posted by Étienne @ 08/01/2003 12:21 PM EST

One of the guys putting up a fence with us is caucasian

Posted by Anonymous @ 08/01/2003 12:53 PM EST

On one side of my parents' property there is a large bush and on the other side our neighbours built a fence. Since we back onto city living there is already a fence there as well. My dad built a gate on one side and a small part of a fence on the other and instantly we were totally fenced in, it was great.

Posted by Mike @ 08/01/2003 01:11 PM EST

well his fence won't be up yet.

Mike: how very white of you guys!

Posted by Rayne @ 08/01/2003 01:34 PM EST

I thought this posting was going to be about "l'escrime"...:P

Posted by dAN @ 08/01/2003 06:04 PM EST

I'm too clever for you all!! =P

Posted by Rayne @ 08/01/2003 06:29 PM EST

looks like that last comment killed this thread...

Posted by Rayne @ 08/19/2003 02:12 AM EST