I had a curious experience recently. It was early evening and I was home alone, standing in front of the refrigerator. There were four loud knocks on my front door, followed immediately by the doorbell. A male voice called from my porch, "UPS! Hooray-for-love, are you home?" (He used my first name.)
My first thought was: I'm about to get murdered. Maybe some of you will have reassuring stories about your super-personable UPS guy, but I have never heard anyone shout my name through the door while making a delivery. No way in hell was I answering the door, or even going to peek at the person outside. I actually ducked behind my kitchen counter and started mentally checking off all the doors/windows I lock whenever I am at home by myself.
Just a moment later, I heard his truck start. He honked the horn a couple times, which I've also never seen a delivery person do, but I made it to my window in time to see that he was definitely driving away in a UPS truck. Indeed, he left a package from Amazon on my doorstep. I'm really not sure what was up with that.
What made it really stand out to me, though, was the reaction I got when I told the story to people in my life. To me, this was something really strange and SCARY. Even if I was only afraid for a couple seconds, I still felt that freeze of terror in my heart/stomach. A million thoughts went through my mind. Who is this man? Is he really from UPS? Why is he yelling through the wall when he already knocked and rang the doorbell? Does he know me? Is this a trick? Am I safe?
I told a few female coworkers about it, and they all got wide-eyed and communicated that they would have been scared, too. The men in my life, though, don't really seem to understand why I was scared. It was just the UPS guy. Maybe he's really really friendly, or he was giddy because his shift was ending. It's true that I have gotten quite a few packages from Amazon lately. And I know that many people become friends with their mail carriers, UPS drivers, etc. But I have never met this person and in that moment I was very alarmed by what was happening.
This post isn't meant to be a rant about my creepy UPS guy (even if he was bordering on intrusive IMO). But it's had me thinking for days now about the difference between my reaction to this, and the reactions of women I have told, versus the reactions of men. I found myself cooking up a speech about these little things that happen all the time, every day. Tiny moments of terror when we hear someone else's footsteps in a stairwell, when we notice someone staring at us, when they try to get our attention in traffic.
I start to feel guilty about this knee-jerk self preservation mechanism, because I know 99.99% of people I interact with have no intention of hurting me. I'm not actually a distrustful person or a "man hater" or anything like that. But I am realizing the very big gap between what scares men and what scares women on a day-to-day basis. This is only one example, of course; it just strikes me as different from the more obvious (but still important) conversations about walking alone in a parking lot.
TL;DR - My UPS driver knocked, rang the doorbell, and then called my name from outside the house. I was briefly terrified for my life. He was obviously not an attacker at all. Women seem to agree that they would have been frightened, while men seem to think I scare easily. I've been thinking about the difference in reaction, and the number of things like this that happen all the time.
Any similar examples/sentiments?
Also, anyone who can tell me whether it's normal for UPS drivers to do this? The other drivers I've known just knocked, dropped the package, and hauled ass back to the truck like THEY were scared of ME.
Submitted September 28, 2014 at 08:43PM by hooray-for-love http://ift.tt/Yw5TYW TwoXChromosomes
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