I have seen the future, and it is floors.

I have seen the future, and it is floors.

What would we do without floors? Floors support us when other things, like refrigerators and wallpaper, fail. A floorless life would be groundless and hollow.

If you lived in an upstairs apartment without a floor you'd become very friendly with your neighbors below. "Hey, Harry, toss me up a brew!" you'd holler.

If you lived in a one-story single family dwelling without a floor you'd have all sorts of creepy crawly creatures and annoying dampness to worry about. Walking from room to room would be tricky. Sweeping up after dinner would be much easier, though.

Fortunately, 99.6 percent of all Americans have floors. The other point four-percent don't have floors because they don't want them. They prefer the low-maintenance, low-cost compacted dirt floors so popular with our pioneer forefathers. The majority of floorless people live in Wyoming and Montana, by the way.

The other good news is that consumers have trillions of floor coverings from which to choose. If you have two or three weeks of spare time surf iFLOOR.com if you don't believe me.

Flooring manufacturers and designers (called "floorists") have been working around the clock to come up with some pretty amazing ways to cover up those unsightly floor joists and support timbers. I was astonished.

Kahrs of Sweden produces hardwood floors from regenerated trees. Golly, does this mean the tree grows a new limb like the lizard we lost in the basement in 1967? It sounds so ecologically conscientious, so socially acceptable, so Al Gore-ish.

I also discovered a carpet made from recycled pop bottles. "Its stain resistant fiber will grow in popularity in the green age," the manufacturer says. Yes, but is it available in a "Diet Pepsi" Berber loop?

For those seeking a Las Vegas look, Gulistan makes a "velvet" carpet. Accessorize with a velvet Elvis wall hanging for a stunning effect. Seriously, it's a beautiful, lush carpet for anyone without pets and kids.

The folks at Award Hardwood offer a floor with a "ceramic finish similar to the space shuttle." I never knew there were hardwood floors in the space shuttle, did you?

Some of the "finest carpeting from the oldest fiber known to man is also crush proof and flare-retardant." It's wool from Down Under and Over There (isn't that what they call New Zealand?)

There are many fabulous choices in carpet colors, styles, woofs and weaves today. I'd like to re-do the living room once a year to take advantage of this, but my husband says no.

And that old reliable vinyl presents endless possibilities. You can find everything from June Cleaver retro to mock Aegean stone. Combine the two for a really fun look.

Floors today can stand up to every imaginable test, including the onslaught of 25 family-members for Thanksgiving dinner. Hurl a bowl of gravy unto your marvelous Mannington floor and it won't hate you for it in the morning. Accidentally drop a 200-pound anvil on your new Nafco and it'll bounce right back. And then there's Congoleum, a favorite of moms everywhere. It's called the "Quiet Laminate" by people who haven't met my kids.

Modern floors are created to be as durable, attractive, versatile, and stain resistant as a politician's wife.

I do have one complaint. It's the use of the term "maintenance free" which was coined by an advertising executive. In reality, the only people with maintenance free floors are little old ladies in dark, chilly houses with mountains of newspapers covering linoleum that was installed in 1938.

There's still work to be done. I'm waiting for a woman scientist to invent a self-cleaning floor. I envision a louver-type system with a wall switch you flip which forces the dirt through microscopic slits in the floor.

There are kinks in this plan, though. How would large items such as rubber balls, Legos, and the family cat fit through the tiny slots? Wouldn't the floor look funny? And eventually (about a week at our house) the mound of dirt accumulated below would make the floor buckle, or in the case of our friend Harry, collapse on his head.

And if there's a quiet floor, why can't they invent a painless padded floor? It could inflate itself when accident-prone people approached. People like my friend who can't walk across a perfectly flat Armstrong floor without taking a nosedive. She's distracted when she sees herself in the shine.

Whatever the future of floors is, American consumers are sure to become even more spoiled. We can pick a pleasing Pickering, a perky Pergo; Bamtex ("bamboo flooring that's more stable than red oak!"), or opt for the romance of a "Venetian Rose" carpet. After a difficult day at work we can collapse into the cushioned comfort of "Crimson Tide" from Coronet. With the mere click of a mouse, we can conjure up the floor of our dreams. What a country!

Madcap Mary Mendoza, formerly known as Hurricane Mary, lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, son, three cats and 200,000 Sunset magazines.