Other People Are Using the World, Too

So, last week was Car Week here on the Monterey Peninsula.

To bring you up to speed if you don't live here, that's an annual extravaganza during which an astonishing number of extremely expensive cars descend on the area. Said cars are naturally accompanied by droves of people who own, admire, photograph, auction, and presumably whisper sweet nothings to them.

Suffice it to say, it’s a huge event. It also inevitably adds up to a lot of out-of-towners staying in hotels, vacation rentals, and ordinary residential neighborhoods like mine.

Joy.

And for extra fun, the house next door to us is an Airbnb now.

The owner has it set up to be super kid-friendly, so we mostly just get married couples with young children (who thankfully go to bed early) over there. But this past weekend, we got a big group of Car Week people instead, and to be fair, they were mostly fine?

By "fine," I mean nobody threw a rager or drunkenly sang Journey from the rooftops at 3 AM. They did have a recurring problem remembering that people actually lived in the houses surrounding their temporary Car Week headquarters, though.

For example, one guy decided to spend Friday night cheerfully parked in front of our house. By 9 PM or so, he was sitting in his car with the doors open, blasting music and enthusiastically bobbing his head to the beat like the biggest, whitest Keith alive. Pretty soon, his friends came out to join him, which meant a whole-ass gathering in the street, complete with conversation, laughter, and the continuing soundtrack from the car.

Meanwhile, Seth and I were already in bed trying to relax and watch a movie, as we do. Eventually, we got tired of waiting for them to wrap it up and go inside, so Seth opened the curtain and shone his phone flashlight outside at them.

And that was pretty much it.

Neither of us yelled or marched outside in our underwear to lecture anyone about residential noise etiquette. Nobody called the cops. One mysterious beam of light emerging from the darkened house a few feet away was apparently enough to get the point across. The music stopped almost immediately, and everyone wandered off.

But then there was this older couple who had apparently brought an expensive vintage car for inclusion in some of the festivities. They also seemed to feel the curb right in front of our house seemed like a great place to set up shop, so they covered the car carefully with a tarp and parked it there.

And there it sat. All weekend.

Now, I get that street parking is technically public parking, so I can usually live and let live. But trash day here is Monday, and that stupid car was still parked right there when we took our cans down to the street sometime Sunday.

We didn't give a shit.

We put our cans out anyway, figuring they'd move it before the trucks actually showed up in the morning. And if not, the car could go ahead and take one for the team.

Then Garbage Day Arrived

The car still hadn't moved by then. But the car’s owners had apparently noticed the looming threat posed by our household waste receptacles.

You'd think they'd just have moved their stupid car. Instead, they moved our cans around and hovered until the trucks arrived. They even actively attempted to interfere with the garbage collection process, deliberately standing in the way to make sure the trucks didn't get too close to their car.

Seth actually got all this on video. (I found out about it later after the drama was over.) We were also super pissed.

These people had chosen to leave an expensive possession on a public street in front of somebody else’s house for several days. As a result, the ordinary Monday activities of the people who lived there somehow became hazards requiring their direct intervention.

And somewhere between the garbage can incident and Seth’s Friday-night flashlight sesh, I put my finger on what irritated me the most about the whole situation. People really do possess a remarkable ability to forget others exist, especially if they're on vacation.

The Very Complicated Business of Remembering Others Exist

Now, consideration should be one of the simplest, most instinctive social skills imaginable. To the best of my knowledge, we all learn how to be considerate in kindergarten, if not before. It also goes without saying that you occupy a world with other people living in it, so it should make sense to occasionally take those people into account.

But people gonna peep. And since you know I couldn't not look into the psychological reasons why people act like this, I have some psychology to share with you today.

Our perspectives come preloaded

Psychologists use the term "egocentric bias" to describe our tendency to rely too heavily on our own perspective when interpreting specific situations. In other words, the filter we've formed from our own collective experience comes to the party preinstalled more often than not.

Music Guy knew exactly what Friday night felt like from inside Music Guy. He's out of town, probably jazzed about Car Week. He was enjoying some music and showing off his sound system to his friends. As far as he was concerned, everybody was having a nice evening.

But from our perspective inside our house, a stranger had just parked mere feet away from our bedroom and inserted a soundtrack nobody asked for into our Friday movie night.

To get why your music might not be the same good time to someone else that it feels like to you requires you to imagine what's happening beyond your immediate experience. I've noticed a lot of people aren't particularly good at that.

Shared space can feel surprisingly personal

There's also a concept floating around out there called psychological ownership, which refers to the sense that something specific belongs to us regardless of whether we actually own it or not.

Vintage car people, I'm looking right at you.

Once that couple chose the curb in front of our house as that car's temporary home, that patch of public street psychologically became "where our valuable car is," meaning anything that wandered into that zone became a personal intrusion. Including the people who lived there.

From their perspective, our cans and the garbage men that came to empty them as scheduled were interfering with their parking area of choice. You could see it written all over their angry faces.

Consideration sometimes calls for some imagination

And as anyone who's ever had a shitty neighbor or a super inconsiderate roommate already knows, a lot of people can't quite make that jump.

"Someone lives behind that window and might be sleeping. And those garbage cans are probably sitting there for a reason. Leaving my belongings here might complicate someone else's day, so maybe this isn't the greatest idea."

It's honestly not that hard.

That said, I honestly do think these people were spoiled rich assholes who were acting out of entitlement, but this isn't necessarily always the case when stuff like this happens.

Sometimes other people just plain fade into the scenery when you're focused on your own wants, needs, and plans. The whole vacation factor hardly helps things, either.

Tourist brain is a real thing

Living next to an Airbnb (or anywhere else people from out of town might visit) will show you really damn quick that locals and Tourists™ don't exactly occupy the same headspace.

Yeah, I get that Car Week meant visitors saw the immediate area as some kind of automotive playground. They're here for auctions, shows, parties, drives, restaurants, and the glorious possibility of spotting a car worth more than several houses.

But actual locals still have to take out the garbage. They shouldn't have to navigate around your belongings while you're out of town because you didn't want to pay to rent space in a dedicated garage downtown.

I guess at least Music Guy got the message when he saw Seth's flashlight. Part of me still wishes I'd gotten to see that stupid car at least sustain a dent, courtesy of the garbage truck. But I'll take my wins where I can get them.

People Live Here, Yo

And we all spend enormous portions of our lives surrounded by people whose inner worlds are completely invisible and unknown to us. They eventually become nothing more than houses we pass, cars behind us, usernames on screens, strangers standing in line — background scenery, really.

Doesn't exactly change the fact that each little piece of that scenery contains a chunk of somebody else's ongoing life. In an ideal world, we'd remember that before somebody has to shine a flashlight at us.