The Nice Thing about Being a Shut-In

It's impossible to swing the dead cat that's been missing for the past two months only to be found buried under a pile of twenty year old newspapers without hitting a sad or depressing story about a shut-in. But I think that is due, in large part, to media bias. Nobody wants to hear about the shut-in who kept his/her house in order and lived a safe, moderately productive, but exceedingly boring life, so nobody does. All we hear about are the people who balloon up to 900 lbs., collect their feces in pizza delivery boxes, find dead poodles buried in enveloping folds of flesh, and have to be airlifted by helicopter out of a hole in the roof to be removed from their house when they die. It's sad, really, and quite unfair.

What is it the shut-in wants out of life? Why do they refuse to leave the comfort and safety of their own houses? The answer is simple: people. Most people suck, and when faced with the option of going out and facing sucky people or staying home, for some it is an easy choice. Why bother to interact with people who will undoubtedly come to disappoint expectations when it's SO much easier just to avoid them altogether? And then there is the house itself. The common home has everything one needs to be happy--food, comfort, entertainment, and peace and quiet.

I can certainly understand the appeal. But I don't have the mettle to become a full-fledged shut-in. At best, I could only ever hope to achieve the title of dilettante because, frankly, I need SOME human interaction to be happy. I am perfectly happy to take up the role of "homebody," or someone who will generally choose to stay at home over many social options, but that's about as far as I'll take it--and it doesn't take much coaxing to get me, albeit grudgingly, to get out of the house to do stuff.

If left to my own devices, that is. Having small children has inflicted a certain degree of shut-initude on me. I know it's POSSIBLE to fill my days and life with excursions into the world of people with my children in tow, but I'm fine with generally passing on most of these. The way see it, I'm doing it for the kids. Sure it might be "good" for them to get out and do stuff more often, but consider the circumstances and decide whether it would be ACTUALLY good or not. Is it better for my kids to grow up seeing me react negatively to the imbecilic actions of other people or to be shielded from that by staying at home? Or consider my reactions to them. While out in public, I am a bit of a battleaxe. I don't tolerate misbehaving of any sort. And, while it's good for them to have SOME experiences in these situations so they can learn proper social etiquette, would it not be better to limit those experiences so they don't come to associate "going out" with "constantly being harassed to act civilized"?

I don't know the answer, and, frankly, this all feels like me making excuses. But it sounded good in my head a little bit ago.

Anyway, let's discuss one of the positive aspects of being a semi-shut-in that I discovered this last month.

You can do pretty much anything you want to with your "look" while you're a shut-in. It's kind of great, really. Because I don't have to meet up with people who will judge me based on how kempt I am, I had the freedom to prep my face for the Halloween costume I worked up for our party last weekend. I went as Mr. T.

Me, pitying the fool; Libby, doing whatever Punky Brewster did (annoying an old man, I think, as I never watched that show much).

For the benefit of this costume, I was able to grow out my beard for the last month. Admittedly, I probably could have done this even if I worked a regular job without having to explain myself TOO much. But you'll also notice that my head is mostly shaved--because I don't believe in half-assing a costume if I can avoid it. After the party, we finished the shave job, so now I look like this:


Had I been regularly interacting with people and worrying what they would think about how I look, there's a better than average chance that I wouldn't have had the guts to see what I look like with a shaved head. As it happens, I have a head shape that nature has already been kind enough to convince us is normal to be smooth--the egg. Really, if I could just add about a pound of straight jowl, my head would look exactly like it should be cartoned up and sold with eleven others in the refrigerator section.

I'm not saying it's the best look for me--but I might be willing to say that it's the best look available to me considering the follicly challenged nature of my head.

Actually, I wish I could do the mohawk. I think the Mr. T look really worked for me. I looked tough as hell. And, since I'm NOT tough as hell, it would have been a great trick to play on the rest of the world. But the wig that we used looked like a mangled rodent, and bits of my head are still sticking to my pillow where we weren't able to get off all of the spirit gum to hold it on. So it's not a look that I'll be repeating any time soon.

Either way, without being a shut-in, there's a very real chance that I never would have tried it out. So, suck on that "Hoarders," being a shut-in isn't ALL bad!