GEEK BEAT: Hey! Did you just fort?

In the course of my cross-campus travels the other day, I came across a man who smelt like mashed potatoes.

Now it may be because I’m a guy, and as such feel the need to compete with all other males, it may have been because I’m from Idaho and to me the potato is a religious symbol, or it may have just been because I was hungry at the time, but at that moment I was really jealous of that man.

I gave myself a quick sniff, just in case I too smelt like delicious mashed potatoes and was simply unaware of it. A thousand aromas flooded my nose; none of them were potatoes, mashed or otherwise.

All in all it was a very disappointing experience.

This got me thinking about other disappointing experiences I’ve had in my college career which naturally led me to recall my various living arrangements, pretty much all of which sucked.

When I started college life, I was convinced that my dorm room would be the ultimate place to live. It was supposed to be a base of operations for all the crazy adventures I was going to have. In my mind, it was going to be somewhere between the Bat Cave and the jungle gym at McDonald’s.

What I wanted was a place I could hide from bullies, shirk my responsibilities and pretend to be a pirate.

Basically, I wanted a fort.

Not a Fort Lauderdale sort of fort – although that’d be cool too – I’m talking about the forts that we had as kids.

Not me so much, I never was able to make anything cool enough to reach the lofty realm of being an actual fort. I had a couple noble attempts, mind you, but something always stood in my way.

I made many snow forts that were pretty good, but they only lasted a few months and lacked basic amenities, like being more than a pile of snow.

I tried to build my own summer fort, but I lacked the manual dexterity to join two pieces of wood together. For some reason, the only tool I knew how to use at that age was a handsaw, and there’s only so much wood you can cut.

So basically, for nine months out of the year, I was forced to spend all the time I should have spent in my fort, crouching in a hole that I dug. I was even worse off than the other hole-fort kids because I didn’t even have a plywood roof (I sawed it into too many pieces).

But those days should be behind me. This was supposed to be college, my chance to leave such crappy living situations behind and have a fort that I lived in all day long.

What I got was cramped living space full of broken doors and weird roommates who were paranoid that I would shave their knees.

I only have a few weeks left. I have projects to code and final tests to prepare for, but while I still have the chance, I’m going to take the time to live the American dream that I feel I have earned.

I’m going to build the ultimate fort, and I’m going to live in it until I graduate.

Notice, I said fort. A good, solid fort placed solidly on the ground. Not a tree house.

Tree houses are stupid.

Every movie and TV show, the kids always have the most amazing tree houses. These things made the Swiss Family Robinson’s place looking like a freaking birdhouse.

I hang out with a lot of people who take classes about today’s media, with it’s portrayal of women as big-chested, long-legged, air-brained sex objects, set unrealistic expectations for real girls.

This may be true and may be a real problem for young women, but I think an even bigger problem is how yesterday’s media set unrealistic expectations for kids about their tree houses, and that is just not fair.

I just felt like I wasn’t up to snuff with my two boards and a sheet in the tree in my backyard.

In fact, I still don’t.

I shouldn’t have brought this up.

I’d better *sniff* get going. You guys go ahead and geek on, I’m going to go have some cocoa.

Steve Shinney is a senior in computer science who has torn his bed and couch apart to make a “really cool fort” in his living room. His wife is not amused. Send comments to him at

steveshinney@cc.usu.edu.