Pillow Forts & Tree Houses (Encore)

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Bedtime Stories for Everyone,

Speaker 1 in which

Speaker 1 nothing much happens.

Speaker 1 You feel good,

Speaker 1 and then

Speaker 1 you fall asleep.

Speaker 1 I'm Catherine Nikolai.

Speaker 1 I write and read all the stories you hear on Nothing Much Happens. Audio Engineering is by Bob Wittersheim.

Speaker 1 We are bringing you an encore episode tonight, meaning that this story originally aired at some point in the past. It could have been recorded with different equipment in a different location.

Speaker 1 And since I'm a person and not a computer, I sometimes sound just slightly different.

Speaker 1 But the stories are always soothing and family-friendly. And our wishes for you are always deep rest and sweet dreams.

Speaker 1 Now.

Speaker 1 Let me say something about how this works.

Speaker 1 Your mind needs a place to rest.

Speaker 1 And without one, it's apt to race and wander and keep you up all night.

Speaker 1 The story I'm about to tell you is a landing spot.

Speaker 1 Let your attention linger on the sound of my voice and the soothing details of the story.

Speaker 1 Doing so will actually shift your brain activity

Speaker 1 from default mode to task positive mode,

Speaker 1 which just means you'll be able to sleep.

Speaker 1 I'll tell the story twice, and I'll go a little slower the second time through.

Speaker 1 If you wake in the middle of the night, turn your thoughts right back to whatever you can remember about the story,

Speaker 1 or even just the details of a pleasant memory,

Speaker 1 and you will drop right back off.

Speaker 1 Our story tonight is called Pillow Forts and Tree Houses.

Speaker 1 And it's a story about a rainy afternoon tucked into a hideaway.

Speaker 1 It's also about the big ideas of children:

Speaker 1 a bowl of pretzels and apple slices,

Speaker 1 and remembering that you are never too old to enjoy a fort.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 it's time.

Speaker 1 Put down whatever you've been looking at

Speaker 1 and switch off the light.

Speaker 1 Slide down deep into your sheets

Speaker 1 and make your body as comfortable as it can be.

Speaker 1 There's nothing you need to stay on top of.

Speaker 1 No one is waiting,

Speaker 1 and you have done enough for today.

Speaker 1 You're safe.

Speaker 1 Take a slow breath in through your nose

Speaker 1 and let it out with a sigh.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 1 Do one more in

Speaker 1 and out

Speaker 1 Good

Speaker 1 Pillow forts and tree houses

Speaker 1 When I was a kid playing with my friends

Speaker 1 It seemed like our constant ambition

Speaker 1 to build a fort

Speaker 1 to make a clubhouse,

Speaker 1 somehow to construct a space for ourselves

Speaker 1 that could only be permeated by grown-ups when snacks were handed through a flap in the blankets.

Speaker 1 The best version of this dream we could imagine

Speaker 1 was a tree house.

Speaker 1 and I remember sketching out plans with the stub of a pencil

Speaker 1 in a spiral-bound notebook with most of the pages ripped out.

Speaker 1 As long as you're dreaming,

Speaker 1 you may as well dream big.

Speaker 1 So, our treehouse would have

Speaker 1 retractable stairs

Speaker 1 to keep out siblings who might try to take over the place

Speaker 1 as well as

Speaker 1 maybe bears.

Speaker 1 We were kids. It made sense at the time.

Speaker 1 We'd have a fridge stocked with drinks and snacks.

Speaker 1 Where would we plug it in?

Speaker 1 Maybe a knot in the tree. Maybe we could figure out how to turn sap

Speaker 1 into electricity.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'd make a note to invent that later.

Speaker 1 We'd have binoculars for spotting friends in their trees a few yards away.

Speaker 1 A slide or, better yet, a zip line to carry us back down.

Speaker 1 And we'd hold our meetings up there

Speaker 1 about what?

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 nine-year-old stuff.

Speaker 1 Very important, you wouldn't understand.

Speaker 1 We never achieved our ambition of a treehouse.

Speaker 1 The logistics quickly overwhelmed us,

Speaker 1 And when our friends,

Speaker 1 who claimed to have a cousin in the country, who had one,

Speaker 1 we looked at them with a good deal of skepticism.

Speaker 1 Maybe tree houses were only in movies or adventure stories.

Speaker 1 Still,

Speaker 1 we kept attempting to make forts wherever we could

Speaker 1 with school cancelled

Speaker 1 on one sunny snow day

Speaker 1 we met up at the end of the block where there was an empty lot

Speaker 1 full of knee-high snow

Speaker 1 it was late winter

Speaker 1 and the deep chill was giving over

Speaker 1 to slightly less frigid temps.

Speaker 1 So the snow packed together nicely,

Speaker 1 and we had a genius idea

Speaker 1 to shovel it into milk crates,

Speaker 1 the plastic kind with faded writing on the sides.

Speaker 1 All garages have them,

Speaker 1 though

Speaker 1 they aren't acquired

Speaker 1 in any way that I know.

Speaker 1 They just appear in a corner or on a shelf

Speaker 1 and get filled with battered soft balls or swim goggles.

Speaker 1 We found when they were packed with heavy snow,

Speaker 1 they turned out perfect blocks

Speaker 1 to build with.

Speaker 1 We shoveled a flat space

Speaker 1 and started to lay them.

Speaker 1 First a foundation

Speaker 1 and then rising walls.

Speaker 1 When the walls got to their third or fourth layer of blocks,

Speaker 1 we realized we'd forgotten to leave a space for the door

Speaker 1 and had fun kicking one out.

Speaker 1 Also a ceiling stymied us

Speaker 1 and as we started to make plans to swipe tarps from our sheds and basements

Speaker 1 we got hungry

Speaker 1 and all trudged to the nearest of our houses

Speaker 1 to be fed soup and sandwiches

Speaker 1 while our snow pants dripped dry by the back door.

Speaker 1 Overnight, the snow turned to rain,

Speaker 1 and by morning, our ice palace was a lake

Speaker 1 with a few small square icebergs floating in it.

Speaker 1 I'm sure we hadn't given up,

Speaker 1 just changed tactics again.

Speaker 1 After all, what's better on a rainy day than a blanket for it?

Speaker 1 I'm sure we'd regrouped in someone's basement

Speaker 1 or living room

Speaker 1 and stacked couch cushions and bed pillows into a frame,

Speaker 1 and draped blankets and coverlets over the whole thing.

Speaker 1 We'd probably had enough room to set out a board game

Speaker 1 and huddle around it

Speaker 1 to roll the dice

Speaker 1 and mark down on the tiny pads of paper

Speaker 1 if we thought it had been Professor Plum

Speaker 1 in the conservatory

Speaker 1 with a lead pipe,

Speaker 1 or misses Peacock

Speaker 1 in the billiard room with the candlestick.

Speaker 1 Years later,

Speaker 1 when I was a teenager in the last year of high school,

Speaker 1 I'd been on a hike through the woods in the back acres of my grandparents' farm

Speaker 1 and found a tree with flat wooden rungs

Speaker 1 nailed into the trunk like a ladder.

Speaker 1 I'd looked up and seen

Speaker 1 a little house,

Speaker 1 a platform balancing on a broad branch

Speaker 1 with a few walls of mismatched lumber nailed together,

Speaker 1 and a small square window cut out.

Speaker 1 The wood was bleached by the sun,

Speaker 1 and when I reached up to test the strength of one of the rungs, it came apart in my hand.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 treehouses were real.

Speaker 1 Someone had made this one

Speaker 1 and played here.

Speaker 1 And though I couldn't climb up to see it myself,

Speaker 1 I bet there was,

Speaker 1 in a corner, under a pile of dried old leaves,

Speaker 1 a toy, or a book,

Speaker 1 or a box of treasures.

Speaker 1 Even now,

Speaker 1 I'm still looking for those little places to tuck into.

Speaker 1 Maybe less a clubhouse

Speaker 1 and more a nest.

Speaker 1 Today was a day like the one that had turned our ice house into slush.

Speaker 1 Rain coming down over the crunchy drifts of snow that were slowly shrinking.

Speaker 1 Water ran off the roof,

Speaker 1 drumming in the gutters

Speaker 1 and rushing in rivulets down the sidewalk

Speaker 1 and into the storm drains.

Speaker 1 I'd wanted to get out for a walk,

Speaker 1 but it would be a chilly, muddy mess

Speaker 1 And so I'd reframed my thoughts a bit.

Speaker 1 If I couldn't go out,

Speaker 1 could I make staying in

Speaker 1 even more tempting?

Speaker 1 Was I

Speaker 1 too old

Speaker 1 to make a pillow for it?

Speaker 1 It turned out I was not.

Speaker 1 I chuckled to myself

Speaker 1 as I took the cushions off the couch

Speaker 1 and spread a tartan blanket over the living room rug.

Speaker 1 It took a few tries

Speaker 1 and I had fun along the way.

Speaker 1 But soon I had a little structure with cushions as walls.

Speaker 1 I got creative and wedged a broom between two chairs so it stood upright.

Speaker 1 Through the hole at the end of the broomstick,

Speaker 1 I threaded a strand of dental floss,

Speaker 1 which is sturdy stuff, by the way.

Speaker 1 When you need to hang something heavy,

Speaker 1 get thee to the medicine cabinet

Speaker 1 and stretched it from the broom

Speaker 1 to a nail

Speaker 1 that usually held a painting behind the couch.

Speaker 1 Then I crossed my fingers

Speaker 1 and flung a top sheet over the floss.

Speaker 1 It made a draping cover,

Speaker 1 a tent to my little nest.

Speaker 1 I took the comforter from my bed

Speaker 1 and crawled inside with it,

Speaker 1 added more pillows

Speaker 1 and laid back

Speaker 1 and looked up at the tented ceiling.

Speaker 1 I let out a slow sigh.

Speaker 1 I felt a little giddy.

Speaker 1 So glad now to not be going out.

Speaker 1 I could stay in here all afternoon.

Speaker 1 But first,

Speaker 1 snacks.

Speaker 1 I wriggled back out

Speaker 1 and padded to the kitchen, where the rain was thrumming against the window over the sink.

Speaker 1 The snow was shrinking fast.

Speaker 1 At this rate, we'd wake up to morrow to bare lawns on clear roofs.

Speaker 1 My neighbor still had a few reindeer

Speaker 1 and a light up snowman in his yard.

Speaker 1 And I had a feeling this weekend would be the one that saw a lot of us

Speaker 1 taking down our decorations and twinkle lights.

Speaker 1 I made myself a tray of treats,

Speaker 1 apple slices sprinkled with cinnamon,

Speaker 1 a glass of grapefruit soda,

Speaker 1 and a bowl of those little peanut butter filled pretzels.

Speaker 1 I slid my tray into my hideaway along with my book.

Speaker 1 I could watch movies,

Speaker 1 listen to music,

Speaker 1 read

Speaker 1 and nap,

Speaker 1 or just watch the light change through the walls of my fort.

Speaker 1 We would come out of hibernation soon,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 not quite yet.

Speaker 1 Pillow forts and tree houses

Speaker 1 when I was a kid,

Speaker 1 playing with my friends,

Speaker 1 it seemed like our

Speaker 1 constant ambition

Speaker 1 to build a fort,

Speaker 1 to make a clubhouse,

Speaker 1 somehow to create a space for ourselves

Speaker 1 that could only be permeated by grown-ups when snacks were handed through a flap in the blankets.

Speaker 1 The best version of this dream we could imagine

Speaker 1 was a tree house.

Speaker 1 And I remember sketching out plans with the stub of a pencil

Speaker 1 in a spiral bound notebook

Speaker 1 with most of the pages ripped out.

Speaker 1 As long as you're dreaming,

Speaker 1 you may as well dream big.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 our tree house would have retractable stairs

Speaker 1 to keep out siblings

Speaker 1 who might try to take over the place

Speaker 1 as well as

Speaker 1 um maybe bears.

Speaker 1 We were kids. It made sense at the time.

Speaker 1 We'd have a fridge

Speaker 1 stocked with drinks and snacks.

Speaker 1 Where would we plug it in?

Speaker 1 Um

Speaker 1 maybe a knot in the tree

Speaker 1 Maybe we could figure out

Speaker 1 how to turn sap

Speaker 1 into

Speaker 1 electricity

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'd make a note to invent that later.

Speaker 1 We'd have binoculars for spotting friends in their trees a few yards away.

Speaker 1 A slide,

Speaker 1 or

Speaker 1 better yet,

Speaker 1 a zip line

Speaker 1 to carry us back down.

Speaker 1 And we'd hold our meetings up there

Speaker 1 about what

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 nine-year-old stuff

Speaker 1 very important

Speaker 1 you wouldn't understand

Speaker 1 we never achieved our ambition of a treehouse

Speaker 1 The logistics quickly overwhelmed us

Speaker 1 And when our friends, who claimed to have a cousin in the country

Speaker 1 who had one,

Speaker 1 we looked at them with a good deal of skepticism.

Speaker 1 Maybe tree houses were only in movies

Speaker 1 or adventure stories.

Speaker 1 Still,

Speaker 1 we kept attempting to make forts

Speaker 1 whenever we could.

Speaker 1 The school cancelled on one sunny snow day.

Speaker 1 We met up at the end of the block

Speaker 1 where there was an empty lot

Speaker 1 full of knee-high snow.

Speaker 1 It was late winter,

Speaker 1 and the deep chill

Speaker 1 was giving over

Speaker 1 to slightly less frigid temps

Speaker 1 So the snow packed together nicely

Speaker 1 And we had a genius idea to shovel it into milk crates,

Speaker 1 the plastic kind

Speaker 1 with faded writing on the sides.

Speaker 1 All garages have them,

Speaker 1 though

Speaker 1 they aren't acquired

Speaker 1 in any way that I know.

Speaker 1 They just appear

Speaker 1 in a corner

Speaker 1 or on a shelf

Speaker 1 and get filled with battered softballs

Speaker 1 or swim goggles.

Speaker 1 We found

Speaker 1 when they were packed with the heavy snow,

Speaker 1 they turned out perfect blocks to build with.

Speaker 1 We shoveled a flat space

Speaker 1 and started to lay them.

Speaker 1 First a foundation

Speaker 1 and then

Speaker 1 rising walls.

Speaker 1 When the walls got to their third or fourth layer of blocks,

Speaker 1 we realized we'd forgotten to leave a space for a door

Speaker 1 and had fun kicking one out

Speaker 1 also a ceiling stymied us

Speaker 1 and as we started to make plans

Speaker 1 to swipe tarps from our sheds and basement

Speaker 1 We got hungry

Speaker 1 and all trudged to the nearest of our houses

Speaker 1 to be fed soup and sandwiches

Speaker 1 while our snow pants dripped dry

Speaker 1 by the back door.

Speaker 1 Overnight

Speaker 1 the snow turned to rain

Speaker 1 and by morning our ice palace

Speaker 1 was a lake

Speaker 1 with a few small square icebergs floating in it.

Speaker 1 I'm sure we hadn't just given up.

Speaker 1 We changed tactics again.

Speaker 1 After all, what's better on a rainy day

Speaker 1 than a blanket fort

Speaker 1 I'm sure we'd regrouped in someone's basement

Speaker 1 or living room

Speaker 1 and stacked couch cushions

Speaker 1 and bed pillows into a frame

Speaker 1 and draped blankets and coverlets over the whole thing.

Speaker 1 We'd probably had enough room to set out a board game

Speaker 1 and huddle around it

Speaker 1 to roll the dice

Speaker 1 and mark down on the tiny pads of paper

Speaker 1 if we thought it had been Professor Plum

Speaker 1 in the conservatory

Speaker 1 with a lead pipe,

Speaker 1 or Mrs. Peacock

Speaker 1 in the billiard room

Speaker 1 with the candlestick

Speaker 1 years later,

Speaker 1 when I was a teenager

Speaker 1 in the last year of high school,

Speaker 1 I'd been on a hike through the woods and the back acres of my grandparents' farm

Speaker 1 and found a tree

Speaker 1 with flat wooden rungs nailed into the trunk like a ladder.

Speaker 1 I'd looked up and seen a little house,

Speaker 1 a platform balancing on a broad branch,

Speaker 1 with a few walls of mismatched lumber nailed together,

Speaker 1 and a small square window cut out.

Speaker 1 The wood was bleached by the sun,

Speaker 1 and when I reached up to test the strength of one of the rungs,

Speaker 1 it came apart in my hand.

Speaker 1 So treehouses were real.

Speaker 1 Someone had made this one

Speaker 1 and played here.

Speaker 1 and though I couldn't climb up to see it myself

Speaker 1 I bet there was in a corner under a pile of dried old leaves

Speaker 1 a toy

Speaker 1 or a book

Speaker 1 or a box of treasures.

Speaker 1 Even now

Speaker 1 I'm still looking for those little places

Speaker 1 to tuck into.

Speaker 1 Maybe less a clubhouse

Speaker 1 and more a nest.

Speaker 1 Today was a day like the one that had turned our ice house into slush.

Speaker 1 Rain coming down over the crunchy drifts of snow

Speaker 1 that were slowly shrinking.

Speaker 1 Water ran off the roof,

Speaker 1 drumming in the gutters,

Speaker 1 and rushing in rivulets down the sidewalk

Speaker 1 and into the storm drains.

Speaker 1 I'd wanted to to get out for a walk,

Speaker 1 but it would be a chilly, muddy mess.

Speaker 1 And so I'd reframed my thoughts a bit.

Speaker 1 If I couldn't go out,

Speaker 1 could I make staying in

Speaker 1 even more tempting?

Speaker 1 Was I too old to make a pillow for it?

Speaker 1 It turned out I was not.

Speaker 1 I chuckled to myself

Speaker 1 as I took the cushions off the couch

Speaker 1 and spread a tartan blanket over the living room rug.

Speaker 1 It took a a few tries,

Speaker 1 and I had fun along the way.

Speaker 1 But soon

Speaker 1 I had a little structure

Speaker 1 with cushions as walls.

Speaker 1 I got creative

Speaker 1 and wedged a broom

Speaker 1 between two chairs

Speaker 1 so it stood upright.

Speaker 1 Through the hole

Speaker 1 at the end of the broomstick,

Speaker 1 I threaded a strand of dental floss,

Speaker 1 which is sturdy stuff, by the way.

Speaker 1 When you need to hang something heavy,

Speaker 1 get thee to the medicine cabinet.

Speaker 1 And I stretched it from the broom

Speaker 1 to a nail that usually held a painting behind the couch.

Speaker 1 Then

Speaker 1 I crossed my fingers and flung a top sheet over the floss.

Speaker 1 It made a draping cover,

Speaker 1 a tent

Speaker 1 to my little nest.

Speaker 1 I took the comforter from my bed

Speaker 1 and crawled inside with it.

Speaker 1 Added more pillows and laid back

Speaker 1 and looked up at the tented ceiling.

Speaker 1 I let out a slow sigh.

Speaker 1 I felt a little giddy,

Speaker 1 so glad now to not be going out.

Speaker 1 I could stay in here all afternoon.

Speaker 1 But first,

Speaker 1 snacks.

Speaker 1 I wriggled back out and padded to the kitchen,

Speaker 1 where the rain was thrumming against the window over the sink.

Speaker 1 The snow was shrinking fast.

Speaker 1 At this rate, we'd wake up tomorrow

Speaker 1 to bare lawns and clear roofs.

Speaker 1 My neighbor still had a few reindeer and a light up snowman in his yard.

Speaker 1 And I had a feeling this weekend would be the one that saw a lot of us

Speaker 1 taking down our decorations and twinkle lights.

Speaker 1 I made myself a tray of treats

Speaker 1 apple slices sprinkled with cinnamon

Speaker 1 a glass of grapefruit soda

Speaker 1 and a bowl of those little peanut butter filled pretzels.

Speaker 1 I slid my tray into my hideaway,

Speaker 1 along with my book.

Speaker 1 I could watch movies,

Speaker 1 listen to music,

Speaker 1 read and nap,

Speaker 1 or just watch the light change through the walls of my fort.

Speaker 1 We would come out of hibernation soon,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 not quite yet.

Speaker 1 sweet dreams.