Domestic Spying

Or, Why I Love this Family of Mine

Just like the President of the United States, lately I've been eavesdropping on my neighbors without a warrant.

However, unlike our Dear Leader, I haven't been doing it on purpose. For the past couple of weeks, our baby monitor has been on the fritz. I'm not sure what happened; we've had it for over a year and a half, and it's never seriously malfunctioned until recently. But about a month and a half ago, one of the recievers started randomly picking up all sorts of feedback and static, and more recently it's begun almost exclusively picking up actual audio signals from other baby monitors in our apartment building (instead of the signal from the transmitter in Isaac's room TWENTY FEET AWAY, which it apparently has lost the ability to hear) .

More than half the residents in our complex seem to be families with small children, so there are LOTS of baby monitor signals flying around. Ever since we moved in here a year ago, I've always kind of assumed that some of our neighbors were probably picking up signal from our monitor now and again and listening to us. Frankly, I've never thought much of it, because despite the fancy tennis courts and clubhouse and the high rent, this complex is cheaply built, and my next-door and upstairs neighbors could probably hear half of what goes on in my home each day through the paper-thin walls of our building with their own ears if they gave half a try.

So, it doesn't much bother me that someone might be eavesdropping on me. But hearing other people's conversations over the transmitter freaks me out. I feel like a sleazy voyeur, despite the accidental nature of these encounters.

The truth is, despite having spoken with most of my neighbors in person, I can't actually usually tell who I'm hearing on the monitor. The sound is always distorted, kind of like it is with those voice disguisers they use on TV news shows when they're interviewing corporate whistleblowers and people in the witness protection program, and though I can usually guess the gender of the speaker, and make out a few of the words, I can't recognize the owner of the voice, which is a relief. But it still creeps me out on some fundamental moral level to be secretly eavesdropping on someone else's home life, even if I don't have a clue who I'm listening to. And besides, I'm trying to hear what's going on in MY baby's room, not someone else's apartment.

So, whenever I start picking up sound from someone else's place, I immediately try moving the reciever, or turning off the radio or the tv, or changing the wireless channel.

But sometimes it seems no matter what I do, the voices just keep coming through, and I wind up hearing a whole five minutes of snatches of someone else's conversation before I get totally exasperated and turn the monitor off.

We've tried moving our other electronic equipment. We've tried messing with the settings on the monitor. There doesn't seem to be any way to fix this situation short of getting ourselves a new baby monitor and HOPING that that one will pick up its own signal without picking up everyone else's. So, I'm researching them online right now, and I hope to have a new one sometime in the next few days, and my spying days will be over.

However, I have learned something important from this secret surveilance adventure. It's something I probably shouldn't know, since I shouldn't really be spying on my neighbors, even if I've been doing it accidentally. But despite my guilt over how I've come by this knowledge, I can't help but be glad and a little proud now that I have it.

MY FAMILY LIFE IS TOTALLY AWESOME.

How have I come to this conclusion, you may ask? Because I now know that all of my neighbors with small children argue, angrily and loudly with each other, ALL OF THE TIME. I'm not exactly sure who's starting these arguments, or what they are arguing about, since as I said the voices I hear aren't that clear and anyway I try not to listen too hard, and I'm glad I don't know, because that would be awkward. But sheesh. Here I thought I had it bad because I cry to John one or two nights a week about how I can't get the boy to eat or sleep like a normal person and I don't have any friends anymore now that I'm a SAHM and he just doesn't understand what I'm going through* and meanwhile, all my neighbors are having all-out shouting matches with each other EVERY DAY.

I guess things are abnormally calm and content around here, after all.

Score one for domestic surveilance.

You still shouldn't be doing it, though, George.

*(because he gets to shower and shave and put gel in his hair and leave the house every day, and then he talks to his friends and plays cards on his lunch hour and gets praise from his bosses all day at work, while I scrub floors and wash dishes and try to finish writing projects in ratty jeans and a t-shirt while someone still-mostly-non-verbal tries to draw on the furniture and throws applesauce at me )