by Gina Rullo

I went to our linen closet last week to pull out some clean sheets for the bed and noticed that the shelves in the closet were a bit disorganized.
Pillowcases were mingling with hand towels, and fitted sheets for the guest room were kind of balled up next to the bath towels.
And in a weird way, it brought a smile to my face.
The disarray reminded me of how my brother and I would raid the linen closet for sheets on rainy days and weekends.
Grabbing Star Wars-, Annie- and Strawberry Shortcake-themed sheets, we would assemble tents that started in his bedroom and ended in mine.
Unless you were prepared to crawl, adults were banned from these play areas.
Held firmly to desks and dressers with encyclopedias from the ‘70s, the sheets would provide us with our own private escape from the world around us.
They were not built soundly. A quick movement, the accidental grabbing of the cotton or a careless adult passing by could bring our fort city to the ground. Pillowcases were used for door-flaps, and king-sized sheets were best but not always used because they were our parents.
We tried using tape and “Fun-Tak.” (What is “Fun-Tak? you ask. It is that blue reusable adhesive putty that my mother uses all the time. I am pretty sure my parents’ home was built with it. It’s the topic of a future column, I am sure.)
But nothing worked as well as heavy books and carefully closed doors to bring us some height under the sheets.
Sometimes I would sleep in my tent, pretending I was on an exploring trip. Other times I would sit and read under the tent with a flashlight that I had stolen from the drawer in the kitchen.
Other times my brother and I would play games in our flimsy forts. Battles were waged under the sheets.
We used the equipment from his board game Crossbows and Catapults to fight each other.
Plastic disks went flying. Casualties were high on both sides, and he and I had a blast.
We never played Barbies under the tent as that was not his style. But they were there as were my collection of stuffed animals. A little sister always needs backup.
Our cats would find their way into our hideaway. Cleopatra and Midnight would become part of the games. One cat for each kid. Cleo was more feisty, but she loved my brother and consequently always went to him.
One time, Midnight jumped into the middle of the fort and brought the big pile of cotton down onto our heads. He wanted a place to sleep, and we wanted to play.
A couple of times we tried to build our tent in the dining room, but the adult foot traffic was not conducive to extended play times.
The worst part of the day was putting away our tents. Folding the fitted sheets was never easy.
One time I tried to throw all the sheets down the laundry shoot so they could be washed and folded by a pro. Needless to say that didn’t work.
Quickly we would attempt to fold the sheets and pillowcases and put them away so we could begin our next adventure. They were tossed into the linen closet with no regard to the order my mother attempted to maintain in that location.
It’s so strange that seeing that balled-up sheet brought back such memories. I wonder what it would be like to read under a tent made of sheets at my age now?
Gina Rullo is the editor-in-chief of The Hammonton Gazette.