Boundaries

A very short story

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“Hedges.”

“Hedges? What about hedges?”

John and Chelsea were walking home from school. They’d struck up a friendship after walking the same route every school night, as they lived in adjacent streets. They got into the habit of expressing a thought as it occurred to them. It was a way of sparking a conversation that could go in almost any direction. The more vague it sounded, the more the possibilities. Looking at the small leaf in her hand, Chelsea unravelled her thoughts, developing the thread as she went.

“Do you ever pluck leaves from people’s hedges as you walk past”, she asked John. “I think everybody does.”

He waited for the thread to unravel just a little bit, but he refused to take the baton.

“Am I destroying someone’s property or do they forfeit their rights because it’s sticking out into the road? You know, if someone has a tree and a branch pokes into your garden you are allowed to chop it off.”

“But you’re supposed to throw it back” said John, matter of factly. He enjoyed the fact checking but wasn’t seeing rich pickings in this conversation. Ordinarily, either party would readily defer to a closed answer but Chelsea was in mid-unravel.

“So where does the hedge stop being private and be available for anyone to use or abuse? It’s not just about ownership or legals it’s about what everyone believes is right or wrong. What’s the difference between someone accidentally falling into the hedge and damaging it — and someone deliberately grabbing a handful of leaves and ripping them away just for the hell of it?”

John reached out and put a hand on Chelsea’s shoulder. She pulled away as he was about to tell her to chill.

Note: this story was written on my iPhone on a bus. All that was in my head was ‘hedges’. The theme for the story was an afterthought. I’ve done minimal, immaterial, edits before publishing it here.