Fort Building

Once upon a time my sophomore year of college, my roommates and I built a fort. Now. This was not just any ol' fort. This was a living room sized fort. This was huge! We used command hooks to hang ropes across the ceiling and a zillion blankets. It was big enough to fit our couch and entertainment center underneath. After we finished building it, Jeremy joined in on our girls night and we watched "Red" together. It was quite the splendid evening.

Because we put in so much hard work and effort, we decided to leave the fort up for the rest of the week. We had people come over to the apartment for no other purpose than to check it out. We even had strangers, who had seen the extravaganza through our window while they were eating their Slab Pizza out on the patio outside our door, knock on our door and ask if they could look at it. It was a wonderful, delightfully happy time of life.

Upon building the fort, we decided that we needed to make rules for it. We grabbed four pieces of paper, and Amelia scribbled them down while we shouted them out. Upon cleaning out our apartment to move to another one in the complex, I found those four papers and it reminded me of what a splendid time we had had that year. The rules we made-up are as follows:

RULES of the FORT

1. Thou shalt not touch the ropes or the Kitchen!
2. Thou shalt not make-out...too much.
3. Thou shalt be ambiguous.
4. Thou shalt do no homework while in the sanctity of the fort.
5. Thou shalt not leave they brushes unattended.
6. Honor the blankets and the pillows that thy days may be long in the fort.
7. Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's blanket.
8. Thous shalt EAT!!
9. Thou shalt eat happy thoughts.
10. Thou shalt keep the girls' night HOLY.

Let me explain the inside jokes...

1. Morgan Kitchen was one of my roommates. the Kitchen is a reference to her.

2. When one of us left the apartment to go somewhere, instead of telling them to remember who they were, we would usually yell out "Don't make out too much!" (We were all seriously dating and madly in love with at least three men each at the time. So, of course, this piece of advise was very useful.) 

5. Upon moving into the apartment, Morgan and I discovered that we had the exact same brush. Several days later, Amelia went to the store and happened to buy the exact same brush. The joke was that Morgan and my brush had made a baby. Being that we didn't want any more baby brushes, we decided it would be a good idea to have a rule about not leaving brushes alone in the fort.

9. I told Amelia to write down: "Thou shalt think happy thoughts." Obviously, she was a little hungry at the time, because what came out was "Thou shalt eat happy thoughts." I think her modified version is quite perfect.

We've all moved on in different directions now, but it's nice remembering those fun and crazy times that we had together that sophomore year, like the time we built a fort.