Blanket Forts FTW

I just got the following picture message:

"Sweet!" I replied. "I loooove indoor camping. So fun!"

"Yeah, ha ha."

I assume the sender thought my response was oozing with my usual amount of sarcasm. Not so.

I freakin love inside tents, and it all started with blanket forts. Oh, you don't know about blanket forts? Let me edumuhcate you.

Blanket fort - When every pillow, sofa cushion, movable chair, and (obv.) blanket in the vicinity is used to assemble a complex, massive, sometimes multi-room-spanning construction of tunnels and chambers, through which children can burrow, while scarfing junk food and hoarding toys.  Every mother's clean-up nightmare.

My siblings and I had some epic blanket forts. We would live in there for days, pretty much until my mother wanted to used the sofa...or a blanket...or a chair...or was looking for any of the the food in the house.

What is so special about forts for kids? Maybe it's having that first taste of your very own space, a place that's just your size, that you created, a place where you can hide and eat Oreos, or read a book, or daydream, even if it's a towel hung between two dining chairs.

I wonder if that tent in the picture message would have the same feeling now that I've had my own place(s) for so long? I doubt it, but I wish it would.