when i was about ten years old, i didn’t have a treehouse. i had never been inside of one. i didn’t have one of those clubhouses inside of my father’s toolshed, either — hell, we didn’t even have a toolshed. instead, i had the garage… and the many boxes and miscellaneous apparatus inside of it.

my younger sister and i first discovered that the garage could indeed be used as something other than a storage facility for our parents’ rat-pack tendencies. with huge boxes and broken furniture spanning the spaceous room, the garage appeared as a system of caverns and crevices which could be used to our will. along with the help of a few other cousins — and without the knowledge of our elders — we set out to build a great clubhouse in the debris of suburban living. we made space for separate quarters designated to each club member, and i carefully choose mine as the highest (and cleanest) spot close to the stucco ceiling of the garage. it was pure revelry in our makeshift fortress. that is, until our parents discovered it.

you see, as we made merry in our beloved fortress, none of us children acknowledged the danger of gas fumes. there were quite a few tins of gas in the corner of the garage for the car, tins to which we paid little mind, tins which were leaking gas and filling the room with a distinct and potentially harmful odour. to this day, i’m not quite sure if the fumes were at all lethal or if our parents were simply being overbearing adults. all i remember was being forthwith stripped of our access to the garage and seeing the old furniture and boxes being tossed into a truck.

when i think about our crude little fortress in the garage, i can’t help but feel like a little ethiopian child making toys out of landfill trinkets. i feel that pathetic.