Nature and Architecture Anonymous

My favorite childhood activity was bringing my bedroom outside. I would lug out everything I could and drape it throughout the shrubs that lined the apartment property where I lived. There were no trees, so I couldn’t have a treehouse, but I could make my own shrubhouses. My mom didn’t like all my worldly belongings sprinkled across dozens of bushes, even though she let me enjoy it for a little while almost every day. When we went back inside, I would stack video tapes like bricks and make myself tiny huts.

In sixth grade math class we started using graph paper, and I fell in love. I somehow assembled myself the largest expanse of graph paper known to man. The whole thing was thirty-some pages all meticulously taped together. I spent hours with a protractor, a ruler and a compass planning out my dream house. It had a forest in the back yard and every tree held a treehouse; there was a garden with nothing but basil; the biggest room was my closet. I carried it all in a leather zipper tax folder my grandmother had almost foolishly thrown away. Embossed across it in cursive, curly characters were letters so intricate I could barely figure them out. I carried it with me everywhere for all three years of middle school.

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