The Clinging Vine of Voyeurism

The grill of my old Ford pick-up had hay growing out the front splines and the entire yard was covered over with the shimmering green evidence of neglect. The old home place was barely standing and the empty state of disrepair was no longer just evident, it was morbidly visible. The gable peaks no longer sliced the sky with architectural precision. The peaks dipped with aged weakness reminding me of the broken down spines of the aged thorough-bred horses my family adopted. The porch sagged and screamed of dangers lurking behind the threshold.

I decided to step over the debris and circle the home before entering. The trek itself was perilous because of the obstacles presented by natures reclaiming of the land. Stepping lightly over several opaque objects, I glanced at the south side of the house. The English Ivy that my mother had cherished so dearly had hidden the home from light and the wood and Cornish boards were sagging and smelled of decay. The lack of the sun's rays that would dry and kill the rot was forbidden entrance by the ivy and this side of the home had disintegrated much quicker.

The innocence and naivete' of childhood memories can be covered the same way age and neglect covers the empty home. Certain things were never supposed to be shared. They had a place of honor and respect in the family. The parents privacy, the brothers and sisters secrets, private things that were to be held with a certain proclaimed, lofty position of forbidden trespass. They had to be maintained. They must be overseen. And when inadvertent discovery wounds the purity of the child's mind, there must be an adjustment and healing. It is what makes sexual abuse so devastating to children because it is often ignored and hidden beneath the dark covering of the parasitical insolence of evil.

Nature gave us a timely program of understanding the private matters of our sexuality. When intruders step crudely on our zones of privacy we cannot accept them as life matters and shovel the debris of our own memories of compromising hurts over the intruders of our hearts. We must keep the gates of social intimacy locked with the security of the self-proclaimed honoring of others privacy.

There is a landslide of programming and the media marketeers that have provoked hundreds of avenues to captivate the eyes of secret seekers. Those who have tasted the forbidden secrets of others privacy and seek to exploit any and all who would succumb to the beast of carnality. From the natural order of gossip, where one discovers secrets that lift the low esteem of the debaucherous, to the voyeuristic displaying of scenes filmed by hidden cameras, our society is becoming habitual peeping toms.

When I was a child, we lived down the street from the Peeping Tom murderer in the sixties. My father discovered footprints beneath the bathroom window of our home, and being a Houston Policeman took fingerprints off of the windowsill that helped to convict the killer. There is nothing like the fear of having your privacy violated by a lecherous killer. Yet, we are now proclaiming it fair game for any who can figure out how to film our sons and daughters for the same type of Pedophilia, the murdering of innocence. We need to understand that the creeping vines of voyeurism will one day break down the fabric of our families. The neglect of limiting its growth with tenacious oversight and helping to heal quickly the wounds of the intruders will allow the unstemmed growth to destroy a generation.