So I received an invite from a friend to come and live in a box in British Columbia with her. While I am almost 75% sure that she is being funny and this invite is not real, I am reminded of another story featuring my next-door neighbour/best friend/substitute sister, Kate.

I wish I could say that Kate and I had been 7 or 8, but in actuality we were probably 12 or 13. We always did a bunch of stupid stuff growing up, but this one is probably sitting high on the list.

It was a summer day and we got this stupid awesome idea to build a cardboard box fort. We went around town collecting boxes from the furniture stores and found ourselves some prime building materials. We then begged her mom for some of her expensive packaging tape, because we needed the best to hold together our fort. I'm almost positive that she said no, but we ended up with the tape in the end.

We set up tarps on the grass of my backyard and set out to make our little forts. We started off easily. We needed doors in our boxes to get in and out. Fairly simple. We finished that a little bit too early though. So we went off and found more cardboard, because what our fort was missing was a connection between our two separate dwellings. After all, walking the 4 or 5 (probably less) feet between the two would be so difficult.

The additions to our forts became substantial. I had a little flower garden outside of mine (mom was really happy that I dug up the lawn for that), we made curtains, and shutters for our windows. Then came the idea for a sunroof. In a cardboard box. So Kate set up to cut a hole in the roof of her box, and did so by sitting in her box, looking up at the top. Somehow (and I really do not have an inkling as to how) she ended up slicing her nostril and giving herself a nosebleed.

After we got the bleeding under control, we decided that we needed to reward ourselves for the hard work by sleeping out in the box. Dad even gave us a tarp to cover our little hobo-dwellings when it started to rain. This was probably one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life. I think we made it until about 3 or 4 in the morning before we migrated – damp and disappointed – to my living room.

I think that is as close to living on the street that I ever want to come.