Automation robs us of socialising at the gate

When I grew up, getting out of their cars and opening gates gave the grown-ups a chance to meet and greet, almost daily, even if only fleetingly.

Last week was exceptionally challenging, to put it mildly. I was subjected to manual labour of a kind I have not experienced in more than a decade.

It started on Monday morning at the crack of dawn. I was about to drive to work, but I couldn’t get out of the driveway. The gate just wouldn’t open. No matter how hard or continuously I pressed the little red button on the remote, the gate just would not budge. Not even an inch.

It was freezing cold and still dark, and I felt a sense of urgency, which I knew could escalate to outright panic with every passing moment. Would I be stuck in my own yard for whoever knows how long?

Then I saw it: the gate motor was missing. Stolen during the night. The only evidence of the motor’s existence were three wires peeping out of the conduit at the passing traffic. My only option was to get out of my car and manually push the gate open.

Strange as it might sound, I can’t remember when last I actually opened a gate with my hands.

I remember that as a child, whenever we went visiting, opening gates was one of my duties – probably because I was the only boy.

Heaven forbid that my older sister should be tasked with gate duty. It was the boy on the back seat’s job back then.

Yes, it was a mundane task and no, it wasn’t quite as simple as one might think. Some gate mechanisms were quite tricky for a sixyear-old to negotiate, but not half as tricky as some of the dogs I encountered.

At home, the task of opening gates was a shared one – whoever needed it opened, had to do it themselves.

Sometimes my mother would try her luck, though. I knew that two short blasts from the hooter was a call to action.

And when I heard my father’s Ranger pull up, I’d go out to meet him in the driveway where he would undoubtedly be catching up on the day’s news with the neighbours. Getting out of their cars and opening gates gave the grown-ups a chance to meet and greet, almost daily, even if only fleetingly.

It seems our electric fences and automated gates have robbed us of those brief, neighbourly moments.