Words for My Enjoyment

Today’s Prognosis on Cottage Cheese Ceilings

April 26th, 2004

Food is food. Ceilings are ceilings. Mixing the two just won’t do.

(Hey, that rhymes.)

I have noticed myself lately spending a lot of time laying on my back looking at ceilings. There have also been moments where I have been standing, waiting for elevators and my eyes turn to what’s above me. I have also been known to, as I’m brushing my teeth, look around at my surroundings. And every time I do so, I spot the ‘ol cottage cheese.

Cottage cheese ceilings have been with us, well, as long as cottage cheese has, but you’d be hard pressed to find any sort of real legitimate literature that tells you why the two fads happened to start all around the same time. Some say that the inventors of the original pack of cottage cheese (Knudsen) were friends with the family that invented paint with texture (Glidden) and since both their company names ended in “en” (which they discovered one Sunday while watching football in a local Florida country club) they decided that they could both help each other out.

So Knudsen donated the curds from cottage cheese to Glidden, and Glidden donated paint thinner to Knudsen. Cottage cheese with a “tangy-bite” and paint with a “curdy-feel” all came together like most Republican and Democratic conventions do — quite a lot of attention and chaos, then absolutely nothing. Not a peep. For if the public were ever to find out the truth, well, it would all be over.

Yet here I sit, writing this post, sitting in a Dallas hotel room and looking at the cottage cheese ceiling above me. And all I can think about is that if the world were suddenly to turn upside down (a thought I had often as a child) and the ceiling suddenly became the floor - it would be hell to walk on, and I’d have blisters just from walking on the ceiling-now-floor to the bathroom. It would not be comfortable nor would it be sturdy enough.

Just what our friends at Glidden and the rest of the texture-famous paint companies were going for with cottage cheese ceilings is anyone’s guess. It’s not like we touch them on a regular basis. It’s not like we’ve taken the NO CARBS, LOTS OF PROTEIN scenario to the point where we want our ceilings to have 0% Carbs and 100% protein (the cottage-curds). Right?

So, then why?

Based on the fact that there is no real answer to the real reason for cottage cheese ceilings, I am here to tell you that the future of cottage cheese ceilings and my prognosis on said subject matter is not too positive. I see the trend moving away from protein-enriched ceiling textures. I see people looking up at such and saying with defiance and fervor and hard-core dedication, “Yeah, maybe we want to get rid of that stuff. You know, if we have any time. Yeah, like next year maybe.”

And for those who deny the call to smoothness, another fate awaits you. For when the world turns upside down and you still have your damn silly cottage cheese ceilings, you’d better get your Dr. Scholls ready because you’re in for a blister-party the likes of which no mere mortal has ever seen.

So, start scrapin’.

Posted under Prognosis. |