Enemy of the Neighborhood, an innocent story

To observe my husband and I communicating late at night, you would think you were watching a scene from Will Smith’s flick “Enemy of the State”. The movie, a high tech thriller, features sophisticated listening and tracking devices planted in Smith’s character’s home. Although no one has planted any sort of device in our home, we discovered by accident that we had by using a simple baby monitor in our infant daughter’s room. These days it leaves my husband and myself gesturing in sign language and sneaking off to a far corner on the front porch to discuss household and financial matters long after she has gone to sleep.

Everyone on our street began having kids at the same time. While at a neighborhood gathering we were all cheerily endorsing baby products and in particular, a brand of baby monitor we all use to pick up the breathing and every lovable coo and goo our new babies made. Little did we know that the monitors would be picking up every sweet sound she made and every sound we made, (and you can guess which ones they were) and broadcasting them all over the neighborhood. We had a full listening audience unbeknownst to us.

When one of our neighbors first mentioned hearing me sing over the monitor, I thought it was funny, hoping against hope that I had sung on key and actually knew all the words to the song. I told my husband about it and he remarked that maybe we needed to be more careful talking in her room when the monitor was on.

Months passed and we thought nothing else of it. A few times, when we turned off the transmitter, the receiving end of the monitor would pick up bits and pieces of our neighbors conversations, cordless phone calls and the occasional CB radio rumblings. We always laughed at the transmissions, sometimes we were a bit surprised, but usually we would decide to switch off the monitor.

A few weeks ago, one of my close friends Sharon* (who is also a neighbor), called me and told me that one of our other neighbors Vicki* had overhead (yes, via the baby monitor) my husband and myself having an argument. Much to Sharon’s horror (and especially mine), Vicki was telling everyone in the neighborhood association about our fight. At first, I was stumped, I was trying to remember the last time my husband and I had a really good one. Sometimes when we fight it could be compared to a New England Nor’easter so I reassured Sharon not to worry. No one needed a baby monitor to hear our arguments, and if they wanted to, they should just open their windows.

My first reaction was to kick myself for not turning Vicki and her husband into the proper authorities for the time we overheard one of their transgressions (yes, via the baby monitor). Upon hearing their plan to steal a set of steak knives from a popular Australian themed eatery that they were going to turn around and give as a Christmas gift, we decided to turn off the receiver and mind our own business. After all whom would we call? The baby monitor police?

We promised ourselves that someone should immediately buy a brand new monitor, but then a new baby was born down the street and after much subtle inquiry we couldn’t determine which brand of monitor they were using and decided this could go on forever.

We decided to tough it out and take lessons from movies like “Enemy of the State” and “The Firm”. We now talk in code, crank up the stereo and whisper to each other. We sneak into the garage to discuss the really important things that’s only our business and of course there is always the option of simply unplugging the monitor. And whenever I sense a Nor’easter coming on, I just make it easy on everyone and crack open the windows.

Author's Note: This essay was written during my former married life.