Playground II:
A Hidden Place

Something about kids and forts. All the goddamn time they�re building forts. Out of wood, couch cushions, paper, snow, trash, mud. Kids are all aspiring architects. Kids love hiding places, small enclaves where they can create worlds within the larger grown-up world, macrocosms that are off-limits to adults.

I didn�t build many forts. My parents weren�t very handy with home construction and neither was I. I dabbled in sofa-cushion structures, but it was mostly snow. Otherwise, I made do with what I found. There was a huge pine tree in front of our house that has since been removed. At its base it formed quite a large alcove against the front wall of the house. That was the headquarters for a club I briefly formed with Michael Stone, called the InterKids. We had an ensignia which was a bastardized conflation of the Decepticon and Autobot logos.

The top shelf of my bedroom closet was a stuffy aerie that, had my mother known about it, would have been declared verboten. I would haul myself up there with one or two volumes of our World Book Encyclopedia (the 1964 edition; we bought them used), and do �research,� culling out-of-date information about geography and space exploration.

When we lived in Ann Arbor I went nuts with the forts. Couch cushions again, but also snow. We had a killer backyard and our next-door neighbors had two daughters who were the same age as my brother and I. We�d play in the snow with them, then come in when it got dark to watch �The Monkees� on Nickelodeon, followed by �Double Dare� and �Nick Rocks!�

The house we rented while in Ann Arbor had more rooms than we knew what to do with. Midway through the year, I moved into one of the guest bedrooms. I slid my bed into the walk-in closet so it was halfway enveloped�a pretty savvy design move I�m sure Christopher Lowell would endorse. There, I would hide out and read Family Circus and Isaac Asimov books, occasionally recording notes to myself on the portable tape recorder which never strayed far from my side.

Until a few years ago, there was a barn in our backyard. Our house was part of the first wave of houses built in Grinnell, and as such, had a barn instead of a garage. We didn�t use it for anything except storage, but there was a side room full of dangerous things like rusty nails and broken glass. That was the headquarters for so many of my top-secret organizations. There was also a hay loft, though I never convinced my parents to open it up. Eventually, that barn, the pine tress, and the patio disappeared.

Other simpler, but no less significant, havens included under the lamp table in the living room (which is not a goddamn gymnasium goddammit and you kids were ready for bed half an hour ago goddammit), the vacuum closet with dwarflike proportions on the staircase�s landing, under my parents� bed, the basement rec room in Ann Arbor, any closet of any of our rental houses in Maryland, a kiddie pool propped up against the wall in the backyard, any picnic table.

Now, my bed is sufficient enough when I want to get away from it all. I guess we don�t need our hiding places now that we have our own apartments, bedrooms, and houses. The nesting instinct remains, though. Anything to get a little more comfort, a little more seclusion.

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