The cat climbed to the highest spot in the disco, but then couldn’t get down.
She couldn’t get down.
While I think this pun is hilarious, it made me wonder about being up in the air. About stories. Not the kind you tell. The kind that are in buildings. I imagine, that when the constructions of shelters began, they were only of the one-story variety. The simplest of beginnings.
I wonder, when the first occurrence of a two-story structure occurred. And how it came up in conversation.
I mean, the Minoans were building elaborate palaces — like the the one at Knossos — from at least 3,000 BC. It is my bet, if I were a betting woman, that simple two story dwellings date way before that. Probably when bricks came into being. Jericho’s time was around in 7,000 BC. Those walls came tumbling down.
But how did people come up with the idea? Were they sitting around on the ground, in front of the fire, cooking lamb? And Octavius looked at Bodutious, and say, “We should start building up.”
It seems like we have a tendency of stacking things. Like the ancient tradition of stacking rocks. Those wonderful Cairns.
Or cakes. They all started out on the lower level. Then one day, somebody said, “Ooooh, I love that vanilla cake bread we eat. What if we put two of them in our mouths at a time? That would be better.”
Parking garages.
Shoe trees.
Filing cabinets.
Bunk beds.
We stack stuff.
Stack. It could be a noun or a verb. It is either the pile of objects sitting there, or how we arrange them. Depending on how we use the word in our language. Library bookshelves are called “The Stacks” for good reason. We order stacks of pancakes. Restaurant tables would be crowded if the pancakes came out on really big plates, all laid out, side by side.
You can say a woman is stacked, but then you would be a big chauvinistic butthead.
But I still wonder when we started stacking buildings. At 2,717 ft, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world. It has 163 stacked floors.
Overkill, if you ask me.
Regardless, I am glad we are on top of all of this. And. I hope the rest of your day stacks up nicely.
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“What?! I’m not small! It’s the world that’s too big!!”
― Hiromu Arakawa, Fullmetal Alchemist
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“My ideas aren’t afraid of height.”
― Leena Ahmad Almashat
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In life, there are no tall or short people. The right length for a person’s legs is when their feet touch the ground.”
― Coluche
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