Never Too Old for a Blanket Fort

Sometimes I like to tell myself that I’m a grown up. It’s nice to hear because throughout my child and teenage years I always wished that I could just be a grown up already. That way I could do things like have my own apartment, get into an R rated movie at the theater, or go out with a bunch of friends and get hammered on sake bombs during happy hour. Now that I am a grown up, it feels good to remind myself that what I’ve been waiting for all that time has finally arrived.

But still sometimes being a grown up can become a monotonous routine of infinite responsibilities. It becomes overwhelming at times, drowning my child-like spunk in a pool of adulthood.

That is why I’m thankful for days like this one:

I was in the living room working on my homework, like a responsible grown up would (which is somewhat ironic because it is a responsibility that I have had since I was a child), when I heard a menacing roar from my stomach. Since I am a grown up, I decided to go into the kitchen and make myself a sandwich.

As I passed through the dining room, I noticed something unusual. All of the chairs were stationed in a circle and they were draped with blankets that came to a curious peak at the center, making it look as though there were a circus tent in my dining room.

I got down on my hands and knees to investigate. As I got closer to the opening, I could hear muffled noises and child-like giggles. My curiosity got the better of me and I had to find out what had invaded my dining room. I carefully poked my head under the blankets – all the while hoping it was not in fact a circus tent, as I am deathly afraid of clowns (and yes, it was a glorious triumph for me to even complete the above doodle, and when going through all of the doodles I scroll past this one as quickly as humanly, perhaps even more than humanly, possible).

This is what I found:

Breezy (also a grown up), kicked back on a mound of pillows, his legs crossed Indian style, and his hands resting casually behind his head. I looked around; my 23-year-old boyfriend had made the most elaborate blanket fort I had ever seen. Then I noticed what was causing the blankets to peak and look like a circus tent: a shiny metal pole.

“Is that my shower curtain rod?” I asked.

Apparently I had thus far been snooping unnoticed, because at the sound of my voice Breezy promptly kicked me out of the blanket fort that he had created, mumbling something about my not being invited.

After regaining my balance, I followed the advice of the great and talented rapper Jay-Z and dusted my shoulders off. Then I continued my quest to the kitchen. I was a grown up and Breezy was acting like a child.

But even after eating I still felt empty inside. I wanted an invitation into that blanket fort, and I wanted it badly. I looked over at my homework and tried to convince my grown up self to walk over and finish working on it, but my inner child ached for freedom, like a lion at the zoo aches to break out of his cage and maul the nearest tourist, and it begged me to find a way into that blanket fort.

So I got back down on my hands and knees and crawled my way back over to the opening in the blankets.

“Breezy?” I called. “Can I be invited into your fort?”

Breezy’s head popped out of the opening in the blankets and he stared at me like the guy with the creepy mustache in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and the gang try to get into the Emerald Palace. “What’s the password?” he asked, one eyebrow raising skeptically.

“Fuck,” I said, disappointed; I was not prepared to guess a password.

“That’s it!” Breezy replied, and he pulled back the blankets so that I could enter. I crawled into the blanket fort with him and stayed there all weekend while my inner child danced.

We didn’t even think of taking the fort down when we needed to shower, we just dealt with the mess instead. It was something our parents would have never allowed when we were children, but since we’re all grown up now we make our own rules.