I was surprised last week when my mother told me that she had decided to to pay a security system company for the installation of a new system at her house. I’ve been bugging her for years to get one in her house, but she has resisted every effort I’ve made.
She lives deep in the woods in a very remote location and has always felt that she was perfectly safe there. As for me, well, I”ve always been on the nervous side about safety. Largely due to the fact that I’ve been the near-victim of a couple of rape attempts! But that is a story for a different post. But Mom would never hesitate to go out for a four hour boat ride and leave the house unlocked because she was expecting someone in the family to come by for a visit and she didn’t want them to be locked out in case she got home late.
I used to tell her that she should at least lock her doors and hide the key somewhere and let the expected company know where to find the key, but she never wanted to do that. My father used to tell me to just give up trying to convince her to do something that she just doesn’t want to do; he’d say it was an exercise in futility! And I’ve learned that is the way it is. I think that parents just don’t want to take advice from their kids – they want to appear to be the ultimate authority in everything!
I think that what changed my mother’s mind about the alarm system was that she saw a television show about how easy it is for professional burglars to break into a house and ransack a home. At the end of the show they give out tips on keeping your possessions safer, and I think that is what convinced her to finally invest in a system.