One of the TV shows on my TiVo I enjoy watching is How I Met Your Mother on CBS (Yeah, yeah, so it's Friends minus 1 person--there's a reason this sitcom formula worked for Friends for so long!). I haven't caught it lately because of a new time conflict with Gossip Girl (guilty as charged!), but if I happen to be home, HIMYM is one of the shows I turn to.
Recently, there was an episode where Marshall, Lily, and Robin spend the night in Marshall & Lily's new apartment and discover it's crooked--the floor is slanted, pictures hang askew on the walls, and loose round objects roll toward the door (while the three of them are playing Hungry Hungry Hippos, Lily wins every game).
I thought it was just a sitcom thing--surely there aren't actually buildings like that! Well, as I found out recently, there really are crooked apartments.
I was looking on Craigslist for a new place to live, and responded to a post in the Ditmars area of Astoria. When I went in, I thought it was just a figment of my imagination that the stairs up to the apartment were crooked (and no, the photo here is not crooked--if you look at the molding on the wall on the left, you see it lines up perfectly parallel with the edge of the photo... and shows that the stairs have a decided slant to the right!).
Then I thought, okay, maybe that's just a quirk of the stairway. Nope. The room they were renting also leaned to the right! Talk about your dealbreakers! I'm "crooked" enough, but living in that place would quickly drive me nuts!
As soon as I got to the street, I started laughing, because what was running through my mind was that old childhood nursery rhyme:
There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a crooked little house.
How I Met Your Mother photo: CBS.com
Stairway photo: me
2 comments:
One, I also love HIMYM. You can watch full episodes at CBS.com.
Two, I lived for two years in a crooked apartment in Cambridge, Mass. Seriously, a ball would roll off my desk if I placed it there, and the brickwork above fireplace showed that not only the floor but the ceiling slanted. No idea how it ended up (or was built) that way. And no, you never really get used to living in a crazy funhouse.
Oh good! I've had a triple time conflict for the last few episodes: my TiVo was recording Gossip Girl, I was watching Dancing with the Stars, and then there was HIMYM--I hated to miss one of them, but I hoped I could find the episodes of HIMYM online.
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