The Fine Art of Building a Fort
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by James Gallichio
I love dark, enclosed spaces. Spaces where the walls are close to me; where I feel snug and secure; where I can hide from my parents.Simply: I love forts.
I remember it like it was yesterday. When I was a kid, weekends were bliss. Every Saturday night, my parents would sedate me with pizza, WCW wrestling videos and a neatly stacked pile of sheets, pillows and clothes pegs. And I would commence building Fort Awesome.
Fort Awesome was a chameleonic beast. Sometimes, it was a multi-roomed palace sprawled across our entire living room; sometimes, it was a small, warm bungalow containing nothing but a giant bowl of marshmallows, a torch and my best friend David freaking me out with ghost stories.
There are a few tips I can offer when building a good fort.
First, choose where your fort is going to go. This is important. I recommend positioning your fort in the most inconvenient place possible, such as directly in front of your bathroom door. This way, it will be impossible for people not to go in your fort. And once they’re inside, they’ll forget what they were doing in the first place and stay to hang out. (Preferably after they’ve been to the bathroom).
Second, use a mattress as a floor, and bring sleeping bags and pillows. This will come in handy when you invariably want to sleep in the fort. This will happen. Trust me.
Third, use chairs and couches as the foundations of your fort, and consider using your TV as one of the fort’s walls, so that you have something to entertain you once you’re in there. This will have the added effect of forcing anyone who wants to watch TV to come in to your fort.
A gentleman appreciates the fine art of building a fort: the detailed construction; the positioning; the layout. Appreciating the things you loved from your past – the immense joy and fun that could be gained from something as simple as some bedsheets, some clothes pegs and an unhealthy amount of fun food – is a pleasure that cannot be beaten, and one that we wholeheartedly recommend.
Photo credits go to Smwright and IsabellaR on Flickr. For more information about the finer pleasure of building a fort, visit the Forts subreddit at Reddit.com
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