Buddy the Gourd!

The great new apartments

October 16, 2012

In the future, as you may well imagine, there are even more people crowded into taller buildings with smaller living quarters. There are a hearty few still tending to their single family homes, mostly simple units built in the early days of the 20th century. The bigger palace houses as they were once known have all been mostly destroyed. It happened during the worker rebellions, ah, but that's another story.

Today I want to talk about the innovation in apartment building that has brought much peace and happiness to everyone living in these times. It came about when one of the single family home dwellers was visiting some of their apartment living friends. The apartment dwellers asked their friend, "How do you put up with all of the maintenance? Mowing the lawn throughout the summer, worrying about the roof, insulating the walls, chasing the mice from the basement, isn't it a lot of work, how can it all be worth it?"

The single family home dweller thought deeply and finally came to the reason why she was able to take on all of that extra work and not feel sorry about it. "Because I can spontaneously break into song and dance whenever I care to! I never did that living in an apartment. I would have worried that someone would hear me. How could I ever dance? There would be someone yelling at me before a minute had passed."

Oh yes, they all thought together. The apartment dwellers missed breaking into spontaneous song and dance. A favorite song reaches the top of your playlist on the iPod, you are transported into a happy moment where you just want to move around and sing. And yes hard to do in an apartment. This seemed like a problem worth solving. How to get the ability to dance in your living space whenever you wanted without having to get one of those little houses with all of the work needed to maintain them?

They worked through several pots of tea. Someone made little tofu steaks with tamari and brewer's yeast (very popular in those times) serving them with rice and sautéed vegetables. They had dark chocolate and more tea. And a few cups of coffee. Went out for a walk. Took a nap. Played with the cats. Took another nap. Made sketches and then suddenly they had it! The answer that has brought so much peace and happiness to people living in this time. The two story apartment!

Here's how it works: everyone has pretty much the same living space but it's divided up into two floors. Everyone has an upstairs and a downstairs. They come in through the apartment front door and they find themselves in their upstairs. This is the space with the living room, kitchen and spontaneous dancing! The sleeping quarters and space for quiet activities is one floor down in the apartment's downstairs. So if you're dancing on the top floor of your apartment, the only person you would be disturbing would be yourself, you would be dancing on your own head, but of course that's not a problem because you're not asleep, you're dancing.

And when you're downstairs sleeping, you're positioned above another apartment's top floor. Those people may be cooking, watching TV or dancing -- but you're not bothering them because you are doing quiet things. And so it goes throughout the building. Those who are dancing are dancing on the heads of themselves or their apartment mates, not neighbors living in other apartments.

When everyone goes to sleep, they needn't worry that their upstairs neighbor is going to come home from a late night party, toss themselves onto a recliner and wake them from all of that noise. Because the upstairs neighbor is themselves quietly sleeping.

So it's quite wonderful. With these new apartment buildings people are able to get a good night's sleep and stomp around in their apartment with impunity. Everyone is so happy!

best,
your pal,
Buddy the Gourd

- Posted by Buddy at 8:54 PM