Pallets and Forts and Lost Dreams. Oh my...

Yesterday I went out to collect pallets for a new project. Well, it's not exactly a new project. I've been meaning to do it for a while, but I haven't gathered enough wood, and it's a pretty big project.

Why pallet wood? Because it's free and I'd rather not pay a fuckton for low quality wood that a company likely illegally harvested anyway. And I'd really not like to pay a fuckton and a half for actually good wood. Good wood isn't even easy to source in my area anyway. Much easier to just collect some pallets, design appropriately, and get a hell of a lot of exercise breaking them down.

But, when I was talking to it with my mom, she told me about a time when I was younger and we filled the garage with pallets we were collecting to build a fort out back. I didn't even remember it. She told me a story about a visiting relative and how we ended up selling them all in a garage sale for $2 each.

Once I started to remember, I started to get a little annoyed. I might not have remembered collecting the pallets, because eventually they were just sold off because I didn't do what I wanted with them fast enough...and no one helped me, but I do remember the number of times that I wished I had a real fort as a kid. One made of wood. Preferably up in a tree, but not necessarily.

Okay...maybe I don't actually remember how many times, because it's too many times to count.

I did build forts and things...but they were out of blankets...and cardboard boxes...and when outside, palm fronds and twigs, weaving together the branches to create the walls.

Now that I think back...I may have had a bit of an obsession.

But I never had a real fort.

What I do have is two nagging parents that complain when I haven't done something, yet don't do anything to help. That's become sort of a habit over my life.

Making a garden? Maybe they might help a little when I'm starting it...well...my mom will, but probably not a super ton. Maybe a bit. Sometimes she helps a lot, especially when it's something she really wants too. But, once it's there, if plants die or weeds grow, suddenly it's because I didn't take care of it. Any project idea I have is completely my responsibility, even if they want it too, or will benefit from it. Meanwhile, any idea they have, I have to break my back helping them with it. I leveled their yard. I built them 2 swings. I built them a privacy fence, a new bathroom, a kitchen. I did of course have help with those projects, because for many of them I had no clue how to do them at the time, some of them having been under 18 even at the time I did them.

But I can't even really ask my parents for help with something.

It's so bad with my dad lately that I actually get angry when he asks if I need help with something, because I know he doesn't really want to help me. If we're cleaning out a room or something, he'll help, and be overbearing on what gets done and where, but that's about the extent of his services. For a while I thought he was incapable of using a shovel even.

Every pet I've ever buried I've buried myself.

But all that wood in the garage...was "a mess". Something I was responsible for. And yet, now, thinking back on it, I can't help but think how much more fun I would have had as a kid, playing in my new fort, if only my mom and dad had helped me build it. I guess I was supposed to build it myself...at 10 or 11 years old. I'm pretty sure I wasn't even 12 yet. Actually, I think I was only in like 3rd grade.

I wish I could have known that would have become a habit back then, where no one would help, but then blame me when it didn't get done. Maybe I could have acted like an inconsolable brat and actually maybe get a fort actually built.

_{Photo by Frans Van Heerden from Pexels}