When Pharrell sings about clapping if you feel like a room without a roof, I just can’t go along. Roofs are serious business, even basic asphalt shingles, not to mention the architecturally complex. We once owned a house with a cross gabled roof that developed an ice dam along one of its seams. It was a complicated roof in the dead of winter. When the dam finally melted, the living room ceiling caved in and dropped soggy, dusty sheetrock on the hardwood floor. Homeowners’ insurance paid for the repair, but it was still a hassle.

Asphalt shingles keep out the rain, but they’re actually kind of boring. I prefer the look of a metal roof, shining copper or red. My dream roof is the barn-style, also known as a gambrel roof, which oddly is my ideal personality. A gambrel roof shelters many fellow creatures beneath its curves; it protects a domestic, working space with tall doors that open wide to the world. If I could be any kind of roof, I’d be a gambrel roof and live my best, barn life.

Based on the following roof types and descriptions, what kind of roof would you be?

Gable Roof    

If you like to slide under the wire flaneur-like, seeing without being seen, you might be a gable roof. To be a gable roof is to practice the art of invisibility in the most personal, beneficial sense. Maybe it’s because the gable roof is so common, we hardly notice its eaves. Two plain, sloping sides meet at a balance beam in the middle.

Cross Gabled Roof

A more complex, multi-winged way of being in the world resembles the cross-gabled roof. Intersecting at multiple angles, the cross-gabled roof is capable of reflecting on many aspects of a problem, insight, or puzzle. It’s like the elephant examined by six old blind men in the Indian folk tale. Wall! Snake! Spear! Cow! Carpet! Rope!

Mansard Roof

Do you often find yourself looking up to see birds, an airplane, or clouds? A mansard roof covers a usable attic space where living and thinking flourish. The mansard is a four-sided roof that slopes upward at two different angles like optimism to the fifth power. A mansard roof looks on the bright side, regardless of the weather.

Hip Roof

The hip roof is most reliable. It’s the best roof for high-wind areas. When a situation gets gusty and blustery, the hip roof personality stands firm. Neither wind nor snow nor sleet nor hail can take a hip roof down. In a world where we can’t count on much, the hip roof provides security.

Pyramid Hip Roof 

The pyramid hip roof has its roots in antiquity and a shape fit for a pharaoh. If the pyramid hip roof is a personality, it stands for the self-actualized individual. An individual who knows what they want, what they have, and who are satisfied in the balance.  A pyramid hip roof exhibits grace and strength and is a pleasure to be around.

Cross Hipped Roof

The cross hipped roof is an enigma. Given all the possibilities of its intersecting planes, each has the potential to collect shadows and light. The intricate pattern of sloping surfaces may appear as a mystery to observers. The personality associated with the cross hipped roof is playful, a cipher, a changeling.

Saltbox Roof

The saltbox roof is short in the front and long in the back, the mullet of personality. In reptilian terms, the saltbox roof is a chameleon that adapts to momentary weather without needing to shed their skin. The saltbox roof, as some have said, is like an old soul who can go with the flow.

Gambrel Roof

Also known as a barn style roof, the gambrel roof denotes warmth and shelter for all kinds of creatures, human ones included. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s my ideal roof. I admire the gambrel roof for its willingness to care for others’ material and spiritual needs. Too often, storms and lightning strike, or the night is dangerous with nocturnal predators.

Flat Roof

The flat roof is what it sounds like, an even-keeled personality. The flat roof is a modernist: simple, elegant, stunning for its edge against the horizon. Cool, calm, and collected describes the flat roof personality, which actually has a slight slope for drainage.

Bonnet Roof

A bonnet roof welcomes all comers to shelter under its generous overhang. Hospitality is the personality of the bonnet roof, which frequently covers a porch or veranda with benches where wanderers and wayfarers may stop to rest. Blessed be the ones who share the shade when the road is hot, dusty, and long.

Shed Roof

Known for its modestly, we have the simple shed roof. Generally used for smaller structures, the shed roof slopes in a single direction to do what it does best: channeling rain to roll off its back. When anyone praises a shed roof, it closes its eyes and blushes.