The FORT

~Elizabeth~

Our parents picked up our lives and moved us to the Bay Area in 1996 (a move I will be forever grateful for ~ I love it up here). We lived in a two bedroom apartment (us sisters shared a room!!) for an entire year while they looked for the perfect new home for us. During that year, Jennifer and I explored the area around the complex and found the perfect spot to build our very own fort.

There was a woodsy hill behind the complex (a steep hill I might add), and at the bottom of that was a shopping complex. We started to build our fort by carefully walking down the hill and "borrowing" wood flats from The Home Depot for our floor. As much as we loved the new "hardwood floors" we knew we needed to spruce the place up even more. So we, um, (and I'm not sure our parents know to this day) treasure hunted the surrounding dumpsters. We found a sofa, rug, stake and rope (to climb down into the fort instead of walking down on our bottoms), a computer and TV (both non working, but not necessary with our imaginations!) and all sorts of other decorative accessories.

We loved our fort, and spent many afternoons there just hanging out and playing house. We were devastated one day when we found a new fence bordering around the complex and the hill.

"Well, I guess we'll just have to climb over!"

Climbing over the fence was no easy task, and we were slowly getting the feeling that someone didn't appreciate the fact that a small home was built behind the apartments...

That reality came crashing down on us one afternoon when we were simply enjoying our time at our daily hang out. We heard footsteps that seemed to come out of nowhere, with two men's voices yelling "Who's back here!? You can't be back here!! Get out of here right now!"

We vaguely remember the mention of a gun and them running at us...we high-tailed it out of there so fast (getting over that fence sure seemed easy that time) and never looked back.

In hindsight, someone living at the complex probably thought there were homeless people living back there and called the police for security and safety.  However, we like to tell the story as: "Remember those scary men that came into our fort from the woods, chased us out with guns, and ruined our harmless fun?!"