Flooring

One of my earliest memories is of the first time I saw the house my parents bought the summer I turned three. It had no furniture and seemed huge to me and it had wood floors everywhere covered in some kind of paper on all walking paths because the landscaping was not yet done and the yard was basically mud, what with Georgia being subtropical and very rainy.

"My" bedroom -- the one labeled "Doreen's bedroom," though I slept across the hall with my big sister -- was initially not carpeted. My parents temporarily had a low fuzz, sculpted green carpet in the living room which was soon cut down to fit my room when the living room got better carpeting.

I was probably like four or five by now and found this whole process absolutely fascinating but my impression of the whole thing was probably very wrong in the extreme. I was homeless for over a year in my mid to late forties before I understood how upperclass my mother's expectations were.

My parent's bought a brand new house in a brand new suburb in 1968 priced at $16,000. They had $12,000 in savings and promptly had in-fill added to the steep backyard, plus a retaining wall to keep the infill in place, a fence to keep me safe and a swingset in the backyard for ME.

I was three. I had NO idea how much stuff cost and how abnormal this was.

So while my parents put a hand-me-down living-room carpet in my bedroom like they needed to economize, my mother spent my entire childhood complaining about how my father only bought a three-bedroom house and she really wanted a four-bedroom house.

While using the den with attached half bath as their defacto master suite and each kid had their own room. Still somehow: not good enough. 

One next-door neighbor had eight kids in a house nearly identical to ours but with the floorplan flipped the other direction and half their backyard was a vegetable garden to feed the family, not play space designed for the youngest kid.

They were "poor." We were "normal." 

OBVIOUSLY. 

Just ask anyone. Like my three-year-old self.

When my sister finally moved out and I inherited her bedroom, I inherited her nailed-down, wall-to-wall fuzzy carpet that shed like a dog with mange. Not exactly my favorite feature of the room and also wholly out of step with any and every color scheme of mine.

Suffice it to say, I didn't much like carpet from an early age and kind of felt when I was four or whatever that a hand-me-down carpet was a downgrade over real wood flooring. It was both fascinating to watch them cut this down and make it fit without nailing it down and also a tad baffling that they would "upgrade" my little bedroom by covering up gorgeous wood floors with this junk.

To this day, I like real wood floors or tile or just about any kind of flooring that isn't carpeting. 

It's cleaner looking, it's easier to keep properly clean, it's probably a smaller carbon footprint and it's usually prettier than carpet.

I've watched work crews lay carpet in an apartment complex. They began by rolling it out in the parking lot to cut it.

So never mind the challenges with vacuuming, shampooing and steam cleaning carpets, the underside may have road filth on it that will never get cleaned at all nor any pretense at cleaning it.

That's before we get into spilled drinks that most people seem to not know how to properly sop up from a carpet, pets or children peeing on it or puking on it and -- egads, heaven forbid -- serious amounts of water from firefighting or serious amounts of probably contaminated water from flooding.

Ewww.

I lived when I should have died in part because my parents bought a brand spanking new house no one had ever lived it, the floors were wooden and we mostly didn't have pets, mostly sent smokers outside, my mom was a big-time clean freak and there were no floods, serious fires, etc.

Some of those issues we never had are probably a situation where you really should just tear the house down if such misfortune should befall you and you value your health. Or AT LEAST rip out the goddamned nailed-down, wall-to-wall carpeting.

But, no. People bring in filthy, dust- and lint-coated giant fans to dry it out and then shampoo the carpet or steam clean it. 

Yuck.

Naturally, it's rude to express concern or criticism over such a horrifying and widespread cultural practice. People's feelings matter vastly more than their health, clearly. 

If you are rich enough, you can get decent floors in the name of taste or style, just don't rudely mention to the troglodytes you know in the third world country of Merika that it's a preference for reasons of cleanliness. That's probably a social faux pas equivalent to a hanging offense.

If you are part of the 99 percent (because the middle class is essentially extinct), most rentals in the US have wall-to-wall carpeting and, no, you can't rip this SHIT out so one might be able to BREATHE. 

Breathing not being anything important, no.