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In response to Metaphor For An Urban Dwelling

In the last thirty-five years, the median square footage for new construction of one-family homes in the US have increased from 1,525 square feet in 1973 to 2,215 square feet in 2008. Meanwhile, the average household size dropped from 3.14 in 1970 to 2.59 in 2000.

I know. It's not a great shock that houses have gotten larger or that families have gotten smaller. And yet still lies this notion of not enough space. Before moving this summer, I carted some things down to my parents house, and went out to the garage to put them in storage tubs. I was only able to fit everything in by throwing away old objects I had seen fit to store for posterity when I graduated from high school. Only four years later, pretty much all if it got chucked in either the trash or the Goodwill bin. Perhaps I will come back in four years and repeat the process, to only be discontinued if someday I manage to buy a house of my own to store my useless junk in.

We have carefully built shelves in the garage, supporting an orderly system of these catalogued tubs which go to the ceiling, and yet our garage is still bursting with the accumulated weight of all of our things.

To give credit to my family, it is the home base for six people in a three-bedroom house that has no attic or basement. To give more credit to them, so much of this crap is mine,. I was the kind of child that gathered unremarkable rocks in boxes and refused to ever throw them out, and I admit I have only changed a little over the years. When I had finished my work in the garage, a cardboard box on another set of shelves caught my eye: "Casey's 10th grade school papers". I remember compiling that box's contents very well, and I look forward to going through it someday. Someday, of course, probably not today. Even if "today" I happen to actually be at my parents' house, with nothing to do.

The romance of an apartment building is an odd thing considering that, on a unit-by-unit scale, it is manufactured housing, cookie-cutter and identical. Trailer parks are trashy, apartments with creaky wooden floors are loving. I know there are reasons for this, but it's an odd nonetheless. Apartment buildings allow a person more solitude and anonymity, I suppose. It's a custom to welcome a couple into the neighborhood who moves onto your street, but a little odd to do the same when they move onto your floor.

I heard screaming in my apartment courtyard a week ago, through my window. A woman was yelling "Please leave!" "Please go!" half-hysterically, half-crying. A man was arguing with her but I couldn't make the sounds out. I looked around but I couldn't see or hear where these people were, I could tell they were coming from above my floor but that's about it. The screaming stopped very suddenly, and I raced up and down the floors of my building, hoping to make out which apartment this was happening in. I couldn't hear anything, so not knowing what to do, I called 311, who did know what to do and patched me to 911, and the police showed up and I told them what happened. They walked around and didn't hear anything, and then said they'd check outside. "We'll let you know if we hear anything." one of them tossed over his shoulder as they went out the front door. I realized I didn't know anybody who lived in this building. I had no clue who these people might be.

I don't wish to romanticize houses over apartments in turn. We know the people who live on our street, but it's probably safe to say we aren't friends, and we don't have barbeques or baby-sit each others kids or such things. And even in houses that are supposedly different and unique, an out-zoom doesn't reveal them as much different. From the right vantage point, they're all still cells, tiny as they grow, constricting as they liberate.

People came out of their apartments when they cops showed up. A couple of them asked what was going on, they thanked me for trying to take care of it, and then we snapped our doors shut again. We still don't know any of each other's names.