there's comfort in carpeting

The elevators in my apartment building are old, rickety, and covered from floor to ceiling in green shag carpeting. The kind of carpeting where, if you rub it in one direction the carpet looks light green, and when rubbed in the opposite direction it looks dark green.

And while this carpeting is truly ugly, it has proven to be extremely useful in connecting the tenants of my building. The insides of these elevators have become a sort of community bulletin board, building a sense of family amongst the elevator riding population in the complex.

Every morning as I step into the elevator, I’m greeted with a cheery ‘Hi!’ that someone wrote by rubbing against the grain on the shaggy carpeted walls. Naturally, I respond with a ‘Hi’ of my own, right next to their original ‘Hi!’

And each afternoon when I return from work, I can tell what type of day my neighbors have had by the little smiley or frowny faces that have been drawn on the walls of the elevator.

Some days I’ll take part in a game of Tic-Tac-Toe by affixing an X or O on the makeshift board that has been drawn on the green carpeting. And, on the Fourth of July, in the spirit of the holiday, I drew a firecracker on the elevator wall as I rode down, heading out for the afternoon. Upon returning home later that evening, someone had written ‘Yay’ right next to my firecracker. And it pleased me to be living in such a friendly place. A place where you were cared for and had close, personal relationships with your neighbors…if not in the ‘reality’ sense, then at least in the ‘message on the carpeting of the elevator wall’ sense.

Now, however, they have started repairing and updating the apartment elevators. The other day, I caught a glimpse of the one that they’ve started working on. It was carpetless. And in stripping the elevator of its green shaggy interior, these elevator technicians have also stripped us of our sense of family. There will be no more sharing of daily trials and tribulations through the drawn smiley and frowny faces, and no friendly ‘Hi!’s to greet me each morning.

Sure, I won’t wonder anymore if this will be the day that the elevator cables finally snap, sending me plunging down eight stories to my death. But is this really worth losing the sense of community that has been woven into the green shag carpeting in these old rickety elevators?

Of course, there’s other ways to build a sense of community…but that would require actually having to talk to the people that live around me. And I’m just not willing to put that much effort into getting to know a bunch of strangers.