(indoor garden pic via photobucket user nukidog)
Good Morning SuperForest!
Happy Friday, February 13th to All.
In my apartment building here in New York, I am perplexed by the buildings fear of its own thirteenth floor. The building definitely has a thirteenth floor, it’s just marked “14.”
That means that everyone here who says they live on 14 actually live on thirteen, everyone on fifteen is actually on 14, and our building is one floor shy of its stated height. As in, I live in a sixteen story building that says it’s a 17 story one. I live in a fibbing building.
Why?
I’m not entirely sure…
I hereby humbly request that all thirteenth floors be set aside for community space. Every thirteenth floor should be open layout, free for all occupants of the building to use. With kitchens and recycling centers, indoor gardens and composting, daycare centers and classrooms thirteenth floors around the world could become bastions of sanity and usefulness.
Every time someone thinks of a 13th floor, they should fondly recall a yoga class they took on 13, or a delicious tomato they ate right off of the vine from the indoor community garden on 13, or the amazing conversation they had with a neighbor while that neighbor was baking “13th Floor banana bread”.
Right now we’re hiding our 13’s like we’re afraid of them. But 13 is nothing to be afraid of… it’s a grand ol’ number… Why, 13 is nothing but six times 2 plus one! Or, it’s fourteen divided by itself plus twelve.
If 13 is bad, is 26 twice as bad? What about 52? (eeeeeeek!)
Why do we let arbitrary numbers have such power over us, even to the point of lying about how many floors our buildings have in order to deny that 13’s exist?
Oh wait, I get it now… It is all to make SuperForesters laugh!
Thank you planet Earth! You set aside a special day every year to remind SuperForesters that life is capricious, random, and delightful. Friday the 13th is a day to celebrate how many times we’ve overcome irrational fear!
So, if we remove the fear of the 13th, what shall we put in its place instead?
Love to All.
Laugh and sing and be in love. For today is our day to smile.
And every time you get into a building whose 13th floor is marked “14″ know that it was done that way just for you. Solely to make you laugh.
Yours,
Jackson
(Click on a picture to read individual posts.)
This, I love.
The only marked 13th floor in America, that I have ever seen, is the passport office in West LA (overlooking the military cemetery)
No where else in the world does anyone seem to have a problem naming the 13th floor, certainly not here in the Euro zone.
and for real some pointless Friday the 13th trivia…
Donald Pleasance was offered shares in Friday the 13th, which he acted in. but opted for cash payment thinking the movie would tank and wouldn’t be representative of his best work.
Hey, I worked on the 13th floor of a building on Spear St back in San Francisco… It seemed harmless enough…
Great perspective. Since I was born on a Friday the 13th, I consider 13 lucky!
I had a math teacher in school who consistently gave tests on Friday the 13th. He’d just plan for that :-) Great guy.
I lived in a 36 story building (The Atlantic Building, Jersey City, NJ) that charged more rent the higher up you lived for the prestige and improved view. I think it was $10/month/floor. Of course the 14th floor cost $20 more than the 12th floor EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO 13th FLOOR!