Everyone's suspicious of everyone else these days. Community spirit is being replaced by a general atmosphere of distrust. Store clerks eye my packages skeptically: "Leave those at the desk please, ma'am." I'm not a valued customer, but a potential shop lifter. A stranger is not an undeveloped friend, but a latent threat. I know there's a lot of crime around, and you can't be too careful - but we're overdoing the mutual suspicion, and cutting ourselves off from one another in the process.

It's like Penn and Teller's Parsely Game. The two wacky magicians invented this simple pastime during years of travel and restaurant meals. When your meal includes a sprig of parsley, the aim is to sneak your parsley onto a fellow diner's plate without be ing observed. Seasoned players maintain the parsley defense position even if a truck crashes through the front window. Drop your guard, look away for an instant, and there's the parsley. But this concept isn't confined to eating - you see it everywhere y ou go. Try being friendly to strangers, and watch them instantly assume the parsley defense position. You may be planning to put one over on them or you may not - but they aren't taking any chances.

Take the cat woman, for example. On my way to campus, I used to pass a house with several cats in the front yard. I'm a cat lover, and so I looked out for them each day. One morning I was devastated to see a big tabby lying dead in the road. Full of sym pathy, I knocked on the door to tell the owner. I was subjected to a barrage of bristling suspicion through a firmly locked door. What made me think it was her cat? What business was it of mine? What did I want, anyway? Grudgingly, the voice implied that it would check out my statement - once I'd cleared off. Obviously, this woman was convinced I was clutching a veritable bouquet of parsley behind my back, and would fill her front hallway with it, given half a chance.

"Is the writer naive, or what?" you ask. Isn't she aware of all the con-persons out there?" Yes, sure I am. But there are more productive ways of interacting, and this was definitely no way to promote community spirit. Though I keep my own screen door lo cked, and conceal a tear-gas spray behind me when I answer the door, I see no reason to be rude to casual strangers. They are probably just asking where the local Girl Scout meeting is. A smile and a brief, courteous reply commit me to nothing; no breach of security has occurred, and nobody's day has been ruined by unwarranted rudeness.

Some homeowners go a step farther and make it impossible to approach their doors at all. Their houses are surrounded by high fences with big wrought-iron gates. Attack dogs patrol the premises. Getting to know the neighbors under these circumstances must be quite a challenge. The customary gambit of baking a cake and taking it over seems fraught with peril. If you get past the iron gates, your best course is to feed the cake to the dogs and hope to win through to the front door. You could phone instead, i f they weren't unlisted.

We are objects of suspicion not only as strangers, but as customers too. "Old-fashioned" courtesy and service are fading. When I went to pick up my car from a repair-shop recently, the clerk was embarrassed but defensive: they had lost my keys. I became v isibly upset, and the manager stepped forward unsmilingly: "I'll deal with this." He looked at me measuringly, daring me to start something (other than my immobilized car, presumably). If I had been acting drunk and disorderly he couldn't have been more unconciliatory. He icily offered me a new key as soon as possible, and apparently considered the matter closed. In his view, I guess, an apology could encourage me to bring a liability action for a whole new car. Using my spare key, I drove home, and the next day my mislaid keys were delivered to my door - but the management never did say they were sorry. No parsley was going to land on their plates, for sure.

All around me I see widespread paranoia. In keeping one another at a "safe" distance, we're destroying goodwill and neighborliness. But it's self-defeating to shut out the good people along with the bad. The fact that crime is on the rise means that we ne ed a sense of community more than ever. Maybe we should all relax that parsley defense position a little, so everyone can enjoy a sociable dinner.

Kaye Patchett is a creative writing senior. Her column appears every other Monday.