99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-67- Broken Window

Episode Date: November 30, 2012

When Melissa Lee was growing up in Hastings-on-Hudson, a small town in upstate New York, there were only so many fun things to do. One was buying geodes and smashing them apart with a hammer. (You know geodes, right? Those … Continue reading →

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. My name is Melissa Lee and originally I'm from Hastings on Hudson, New York. A small town I suppose you have to make your own fun. Everybody makes their own fun if you don't make it yourself it ain't fun it's entertainment. I guess the big activity would be walking downtown after school and you could hang out by the wall and watch people that you knew go by. So not a lot going on in Hastings on Hudson, New York. It's about two square miles but it's right outside New York City so it's sort of like you know

there's a lot out there to do but there's not actually a lot to do right where I was. Besides people watching, let's say in her friends would also collect geodes. We did collect geodes yes. You know about geodes right? Break your own geodes. The rocks are brown and won't be on the outside, but when you smash them apart. Inside would be some crystal on structures. And you have no idea from the outside what you're getting.

So you kind of take a chance on it that inside you've got something great. Usually Melissa and her friend Liz would buy a few geodes at the store downtown and take them home and smash them apart with a hammer. but one day when Melissa was 13. We were too impatient and we just had to know what was inside. There was a parking lot nearby with an apartment building and we decided to throw it against the side of the wall as hard as we could and hope that it would crack open that way.

And I think that was the first time that we had tried to open them that way without a hammer just by throwing it. So I threw mine a few times and finally it did crack open against the wall and Liz kept throwing her is and it wouldn't crack open. There's only one little window in this whole back of this apartment building. My friend Liz kept throwing hers and and Liz kept throwing her is and it wouldn't crack open Um So I threw mine and we saw it going towards the window and then I mean it felt like it was slow motion

Her aim just went wild and kind of like nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo the geod went through the window, went right through the window, breaking the glass and shattering it everywhere. We were at this huge crashing sound. Glass had broken and was now lying all over the parking lot floor and the geod was inside. My first reaction was just pure full-on fear. I hated doing things wrong, I hated getting in trouble and I just got that terrible sinking feeling in my stomach and I just wanted to get out of there. We were such good kids. I mean, this is what we did for fun. We broke open geodes.

We never did anything wrong. And now we had committed this heinous act. And it was sort of like the quintessential wrong thing that kids can do. I mean, you always, I always saw, you know, TV shows or red comic books where kids would break a window. I didn't like that. And then they had their face with a dilemma. They go back and tell the guy that they did it or not. Hey, it looks good on you.

We froze for about 10 seconds. And then my friend, Liz, ran forward. She reached into the broken glass and grabbed the geode and we both ran. After initially running, some sort of moral compass started up and we realized that we had to go back and we had to find this person and tell them what we did. Listen Liz went back to the apartment building. And we tried to figure out where the window led to, but when we ran around to the front it was very confusing which door might lead to that window. And so we knocked on a few doors, everyone who's door we knocked on said that it wasn't their window. You know, we probably did that for 10 minutes and then I think we were like, well,

I think we did all that we can do. And we were probably really glad that we tried, but we weren't able to find out who's window it was in the end. Still feeling guilty, Melissa avoided downtown and the window for a couple of months, which wasn't easy in a small town. I thought that we would just go about our business

and somebody would fix the window and I would never have to think about it again. But when Melissa finally did go back to the window, it was still broken. Like a cartoon, just like a, you know, jagged edge hole that was sitting there. Even the glass shards that had fallen into the parking lot were still lying there. It was pretty much like in pristine condition from the day that we had broken it until months and months later. It stayed almost exactly the same. It was clear that the apartment was occupied. Actually, we could see it TV on inside

sometimes. So we knew somebody did live there. And sometimes the window would be raised up or lowered down. So someone was moving this window around, but the hole was always still in it. We just could not even imagine who this person was that wasn't doing anything to fix this window. They weren't even putting tape over it. And we'd even go buy in the winter and see that the hole is still there. The window stayed broken. As Melissa finished middle school, then finished high school. It just hadn't gone away like I wanted it to. The window went to college. And I was shocked to find that it was still broken.

Even after I'd left town. And this became the pattern for Melissa. She'd go away, do some growing up. But when she came home, she'd see that window and feel exactly like the 13-year-old kid she was when she broke the window. When I think about 13, that's like my most awkward, horrible age. The sight of this window would just bring me right back to feeling like a middle school

or again. Melissa is 36 now. Thinking of all the milestones you passed between 13 and 36. I went away to college for four years and by the end of that I felt pretty grown up. Came home, saw the window, felt like a 13-year-old. And then after that I traveled the world for nine months. Came home, saw the window, felt like a 13-year-old. I went to graduate school, came home.

I moved to Washington, D.C. Saw the window. I got married. You get the idea. As much as I was changing, this part of my past was completely frozen. As soon as I saw the windows, just brought right back to those middle school days when we had broken it. So in 2011, when I'm about 35 years old, 22 years after

she and her friend broke the window. I decided to find out once and for all who's window it is and apologize. And I guess, you know, offered a pay for it as well. Now I'm recording this time for real. I don't want to be in the oil. So I go downtown with my sister accompanying me for courage. The whole is still there in the window. And my heart is beating so fast. Should I just say, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, I just, I believe that, that like I know who broke that window

Okay, and I very very nervously blurt out. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to bother you I'm just trying to actually make amends for I think that years ago I'm not sure but I think my friend and I broke that window and so I kind of just wanted to make amends for it You're broken. I think so. You're telling me now? Well, I actually tried to find you at the time, and I couldn't find you. And then 20 years later, I came back to my hometown. I left, you know, I haven't been back since then.

And basically, that's what happened. So I just wanted to kind of find out, you know, who's it was. And I know, good. She Keep me looking for me 20 years. You just said you found me. You believe it? We're 20 years. Well, I left town for a while.

But he didn't want to talk to me. He thought it was amusing that I was now fessing up. And when I offered to pay for it, he said, Is this window? No, forward. No? I'm surprised. I know. Well, why did you just decide to leave it like that? Got a nice breeze in the back there. The landlord had never fixed it. And when I offered to pay for it, he said, no, that he'd gotten used to it, he'd just left it. I can't wait till I walk the window and be dead. It's like I love it.

I wouldn't get a fix for nothing. Anyway, I'm sorry, but I'm glad that you've come to like the broken window. My name is Melissa by the way. Okay. Thank you. It was nice to meet you after all these years. I've wondered about it. That's kind of an understatement. What ever it was that was keeping me stuck in middle school

there was sort of keeping him stuck with this broken window. And he just was content to live with it. The Broken Windows Theory proposed in 1982 says that a seemingly small act of vandalism, if it goes unfixed, can precipitate further vandalism and even more serious crime. That really didn't happen here, except for Melissa's life on the land for 20 years. But the Broken Window did way on Melissa, and I'm guessing it affected the man in the apartment more than he's letting on, and a random passerby, less so, and hastings on Hudson

New York soldiered on without missing a beat. Architecture is personal. The strangest part of our interaction with the built environment is what can be so evocative and meaningful for you can mean absolutely nothing to someone else. This time when I was in town, I just didn't really even, I think I was even in town for a few days before I even thought about the window. I didn't really even wonder about it very much. And then in the end, I didn't even go down and look.

99% invisible is Sam Green Greenspan and me Roman Mars. It's a project of 91.7 local public radio KALW in San Francisco and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook. I tweet at Roman Mars. But this week you have to see the original art by a meal homewood of the caravan illustrating this story that you just heard. It just makes me so happy.

Check it out at 99%ivisible.org. Radio Tapio. From PRX. Radio Tepi. From PRX.