Strolling Around The Night Light

When you live with anyone for at least a night, and you have some modest amount of consideration, you may have to move around a certain way during the night. This is of course to be of as little disruption as possible, naturally. This is in situations where space and privacy are at a premium. It's less applicable in other situations, of course. There's an inconvenience to it, but when one thinks of it as being stealthy and not considerate, it's a little more fun. A trip to the bathroom from a shared bedroom or to the kitchen through an occupied living room becomes a thrilling adventure when you imagine yourself to be a ninja or a commando carrying out a daring mission behind enemy lines. Of course, the imagination need not necessarily be employed to such a degree.

The important thing is how you achieve nighttime transit around the home without disturbing others. The floor plays into things some. Obviously carpeting makes it easier to walk quietly. Where there is tile, wood or any other hard surface, the trip must be made in socks or bare feet. It may well be that this is standard attire while in the home, but you'll be coming home in shoes, so when returning home late you must remove them before setting foot into a sound-sensitive home. Don't throw them, or it defeats the whole purpose of taking them off.

Keep Your Stumbles To Yourself

I remember an anecdote about someone who was an extra on a film or television shoot. It was a street scene, and she was carrying groceries through the background. During a take, she tripped and fell. Afraid that she had ruined the shot, she rushed up to the camera, frantically warning the crew that she had tripped and fell. Of course, the director and the rest of the crew were livid. This person had been an out-of-focus blob the size of a thumbnail until she came up into the foreground and interrupted the actors. If she had only kept her mouth shut and done what people naturally do when they trip and spill their groceries, at worst no one would have noticed. At best, people could very well have mistaken this accident for a deliberate choice and rewarded her.

A lot of mistakes that we make are like that: imperceptible to the observer and dangerous to us only if we say something. In that respect it's kind of like Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart". It was the unrestrained conscience of the murderer which did him in. When it comes to the work of others, and particularly artwork, I always discourage people from saying anything about flaws. The reality is that only the artist will ever know what was meant to be, and which parts of what is are mistakes that mar the piece. Have you ever heard the joke about a painting hanging in a gallery which garners great praise until the artist comes and turns it upside-down as he intended?