The golden rule: Who’s rude, me or my neighbors?

Written on May 21st.

We’re set up in a breathtaking campground. It’s a small loop. 22 sites, half of them edging an oceanside cliff, great visibility all around.

During the day we’ve had the place to ourselves. But both nights now, a different car has pulled into the site right next to us — the shortest distance possible from our blazing yellow van — and parked about a body length past our fire ring.

The first group, a few young women, arrived after sunset. They blared their headlights for half an hour while getting settled. The second, an older couple, came in the early evening. They idled their truck, peered about, pointed, walked through almost every site in the campground. They never actually said anything to us. Finally they adjusted their camper just cornerwise of our lawn chairs.

What gives?

When I complained on Instagram (I’m not above it) a friend proposed that maybe these strangers felt safer next to us. There is strength in numbers. I know this living on the road. But it’s hard to imagine feeling particularly threatened in this designated national park campground. It is at once remote — you feel encompassed by nature — yet connected. The road is right there. The cell service is passable. The toilets have running water.

Someone else suggested they might be lonely. There are people who love nothing more than making friends while camping. It’s part of the draw of a developed (even modestly) campground! There are also those of us who come to these places precisely for the semblance of solitude, though. We didn’t choose the sans-hookups, first-come, park-on-uneven-grass option over its oversized-rigs counterparts by accident. We want to feel out of the way. A site of our own, with clear boundaries of what space we have a right to, is a reprieve from Walmart parking lots and public rest areas where the goal is to stay small and quiet. I can spread my blanket on the ground to read. I can let Scout sleep in the sun without worrying she’s in someone’s way. I do not fear being asked to move.

So I feel righteous here. Sean joked, as we sprawled on our Rumpl after transporting it to the opposite side of our van for more privacy from the newcomers, that “we’re right and they’re wrong and obviously that’s all that matters”. Again: What gives?!

But what gives is this.

We all have our own experiences. Our own preferences. Our own worldviews. This has long been one of my core dog ownership tenets. It applies to everything else I lay my eyes and hands and brain on in our world, too.

What defines a social norm? Sure, the story poll I made swung widely towards “park anywhere except right next to someone else if all the sites are available”. (A whopping 98 percent of more than a thousand respondents agreed, actually.) But still, some people dissented. They messaged me valid counters. And a biased sample of my own following — many introverts, many with nervous or reactive or otherwise “difficult” dogs of their own — is not exactly scientific.

So is it rude to walk into someone else’s campsite? Is it rude to not say hello? When these strangers opened their camper door so near Scout’s lawn chair, and she was distracted from slumber by their coming and going, were they out of line? Or were we the ones sending a snobbish message by moving our things farther away?

I tell myself (and you) a story where this couple was pretty weird, thank you very much. But they might tell one where the young folks in the bright van snubbed them. They just wanted some human interaction. Perhaps they weren’t sure how to ask for it. Maybe we denied them the gift of community.

The golden rule fails when I want strangers to ignore me (I’m reading a good book, I’m playing tug-of-war with my nervous dog, I’m trying to write this sentence) but they want potential friends to throw their arms out in greeting.

And I love — and hate — how easy it is for me to imagine both perspectives. I am at once victim and villain. We all are. There seems nothing to do but accept the messiness of social-creature interactions… and try our best to create the experiences we crave without stomping on others’.