Home Security

I don't believe in old-fashioned peepholes. The glass is flimsy and someone could poke through,
returning me to my source of darkness, the way I must have experienced life before I could
dream in colors. I prefer wide-angle peepholes, offering at least a 120 degree sweep. This way I
can bar three or more intruders posing as new neighbors. They might have heard that I stash
money in aluminum cans, the ones where I once kept generous amounts of pipe tobacco for a
foggy day. They might think that loneliness has made me gullible, more than willing to open for
them all kinds of drawers. Or hampers. I hate explaining to anyone about the contents of my
hamper. I hate their subtle hints about lint on my dryer screen. And their smiles. Their smiles
could be masks and they might want to steal my fingerprints and the various names I went by in
the past. I could be left without a raincoat. And what if there's a nuclear war? What would I
wear? If an invasion of a land-locked country, such as mine, what good would ultra-wide
peepholes do? What role would thermal sensors play? On a recent episode of Myth Busters, the
experts were trying to prove that thermal sensors were not reliable in detecting if a real person
was behind a fingerprint. Each morning, I stand before my bathroom mirror, my cheeks burning
and flushed, wondering if the fingerprints there are mine, or stepping off to the side, whether I
have been truly obliterated.