My Night in a Cardboard Box...

Yes, you read that right, dear readers! I spent a night in a cardboard box. Me. MCK. Whose idea of "camping" is staying at a 2-star hotel, motel, Holiday Inn. ...I'm not an outdoorsy type whatsoever. Nothing wrong with it, but last I checked there were no outlets, no plumbing, and no "cushy-ness" to the great outdoors. To each his own -- I'm just not a camper.

But.. I agreed to chaperone the high school youth group at an event referred to as Cardboard City. It benefits Habitat for Humanity and raises awareness about homelessness. I'd say it's a step up from camping. We were in the middle of a parking lot right behind one of the university buildings, so electricity and plumbing were right at our fingertips. Nevertheless, it was an experience I won't soon forget.

We started off the night figuring out what kind of cardboard place we would build. You see, it's a competition for who can fashion the best cardboard abode out of just duct tape and well, cardboard. The kids decided upon a replica of the Mayan pyramids, having built Hogwarts last year, and so we got to work. Building. Taping. Box cutting. Chasing the hyper freshman down to retrieve a rogue box cutter. You know, the norm.

Oooo.... box cutters....

Soon after we began construction on our Mayan Pyramid it became evident that it was going to be a bit difficult to get the step effect, seeing as the first level of steps was waist high on most of us builders. While we do have one high school student who is well over 6'5", it was just not going to work out to take on such a feat. So we dropped back 10 and punted, and decided that an Egyptian pyramid would do.

That's our tall guy in the middle... you see it's taking shape!

Deliberations... consulting the priest of course!

A decision was made to "cheat" and put a pop-up tent in the center to give us the pointed effect that you need for a pyramid, and to add to the structural integrity of the cardboard pyramid. This pop-up tent will come into play again later in this story... Cheaters? I guess. Smart? You betcha. Remember that...

Note the pop-up tent...

So... we got our structure built and some industrious volunteers decided to take some of the leftover cardboard and make an added bonus to the structure. It was quite the site when we were finished.

Finished Pyramid! Complete with bridge-y thing. I slept in the opening you see there...

The industrious bonus -- a sphinx! That doubled as a storage shed for our "stuff" ... and I believe a volunteer ended up sleeping inside it too....

After the building phase was complete, the teams filed into the university building for awards (Our high school youth group won the fundraising award - we raised just over $1,000 for Habitat for Humanity in our area!! GO TEAM GO!) and to learn about homelessness in our area. It's really eye-opening to realize that just outside of our university town cocoon, there is utter, abject poverty. We live among it, yet oftentimes, we fail to see it. The event was really meant for us to experience a night in the shoes of a homeless person. I went in skeptical...

After all was said and done, we hunkered down in our cardboard pyramid for the night. We played some ice breaker games, had some laughs, and were even entertained by our priest who crawled into the pyramid part way to take part in a riveting round of Two Truths and a Lie. Fun was had by all! I noted just how hard concrete is when I cracked my knee on the ground trying to get into the pyramid...

We required that lights go out by 11:45 that night, and by shortly after midnight, just about all the kids in our pyramid were sound asleep. And just to give you an account of size: We slept 19 people, comfortably, in our pyramid. We don't play around... At 1AM, the second shift of adult helpers came, and my fellow chaperone and I greeted them as they arrived. We invited them to sleep in the pyramid, but apparently 19 was all they thought it could fit, so they made a camp in the small patch of grass right next to the pyramid.

We waited until 2:30 to really bed down for the night. The location of the Cardboard City is right on the edge of the campus, near where many of the undergraduates live in dormitories. Of course, on a Saturday night in a university town, you're going to have some parties and bar hopping take place. So we thought that 2:30ish would give the bar crowd plenty of time to make their way through our city, marvel at the site of all the cardboard structures, and then stagger on to their humble abodes. When the droves of people died down, we crawled back into the pyramid, ready to really bed down for the night.

I closed my eyes for no more than 10 minutes when someone kneed me in the shoulder! A laggard drunk kid decided he wanted to check out our place... and so I not-so-kindly gave him the strong arm, shoved him out into the parking lot, and suggested that he continue on homeward. He informed me that "he just wanted to check it out;" I informed him that we had too many people there already. That was enough, and he left, wreaking of alcohol. Needless to say, the rest of the night, I was pretty much on pins and needles. Every sound I heard, I was in attack-mode.

At 3:30, a volunteer came to bed down inside the pyramid. I had yet to fall asleep... It was chilly. The ground was hard. Every sound made me that much more nervous. Somewhere between 4 and 4:30, however, I must have fallen asleep. Around 4:30, I startled at the weirdest sounding clicking noise and my fellow chaperone saying - "Watch out! They're going to be coming in!!" Yes, readers, the heaven's had opened and a hard, drenching, COLD rain poured. Our night shift did indeed come rushing into the pyramid.

And remember that cheating, pop up tent we put up? It served us very well as the cardboard parts of our pyramid failed under the buckets of rain. We ended up piling about 25 people under that pop-up tent, effectively keeping us safe and as dry as possible as the rain poured, lightning flashed, and cardboard gave way, sending waterfalls of cold water into our sleeping quarters. The downpour only lasted about 15 minutes, but it was enough to effectively end our night. All of our stuff was wet. We were wet. And cold. And very, very tired.

So... in a nutshell, that was my night in a cardboard box. I have only just gotten over the exhaustion that set in from not sleeping Saturday night. My body ached from the cold and laying on the hard ground. But would I do it again? Heck yes! Plus, I suggested that next year, we try to fashion the Vatican out of cardboard... complete with Papal flag. ....oh yeah!

Until next time friends...

+JMJ+