egg carton room

for a couple of years when my sisters and i were kids we lived with our parents in a fa-bu-lous apartment. it didn't last long, but for those two years we felt on top of the world.

this apartment took two floors. on the bottom floor, which was a semi-basement floor, my dad had built a sort of private club. well, it was a private club, but i doubt that more than a dozen parties took place there. if you have a club but no one comes it's really not a club, is it?

the club had everything: a full bar, a fully furnished orchestra on a slightly raised platform-stage (grand piano, electric organ, full set of drums, other assorted instruments, PA system), a good hi-fi system with turntables, cool collection of records, large dance floor, lights. it was, if my childish memory doesn't fool me, pretty snazzily decorated. i think it might even withstand contemporary standards. believe me, it was a pretty cool room.

since we lived in a 5-story building with a lot of other people in a crowded neighborhood, the basement was fully soundproofed. one day, though, my dad got it into his head that the soundproofing wasn't adequate. it was the ceiling, he said. the ceiling leaked sound. so he started collecting used egg cartons to cover the ceiling with. when he got the right amount, which must have been a thousand or so, he put them up. this took time, but my dad had time.

a few hours after he finished his project, though, my dad started smelling rotten eggs. he had made a mistake. the egg cartons needed to be new.

he took the thousand egg cartons down and went to an egg packaging factory (where the hell did he find an egg packing factory? but he did) to get new, unused ones. another thousand of them.

he put the new egg cartons up.

the smell of rotten eggs reappeared. it didn't make sense, but my dad could swear it was there. the basement reeked with it, the house reeked with it, even the car reeked with it.

my dad took the egg cartons down and no one talked about sound leakage ever again.