Movie Tent

In which I build a glorified fort

Since school has gotten out, I've had a lot more free time than I'm used to. I've been spending a lot of that free time on Pinterest and Instagram, where I have been seeing a lot of posts about building forts to watch a movie in. As someone who once proclaimed themselves a fort-master after building a two-story fort that spanned the entirety of my brother's room, I was intrigued. Unfortunately, size and noise limitations crushed my original plan of constructing a fort in the living room for 12 of my closest friends. This meant that I had to go back to the drawing board. My new plan consisted of sacrificing actually building the fort myself, for a more glamorous set-up.

My first attempt at constructing what has since been dubbed "Movie Tent" was anything but a success. After struggling to assemble the large tent without instructions, I finally succeeded in setting it up and bringing out two flannel sleeping bags. I went back inside to get more blankets, and had been inside no more than 10 minutes when I heard rain pouring down outside. I got outside as fast as I could, but it was too late, Mother Nature had decided to make a fool out of me. Despite checking the surrounding sky and not finding a single cloud, as well as checking the weather app, which only further backed the pretense of good weather, there were buckets of rain beating down on my poor tent. The worst part of this, was that I, assuming that good weather was in the forecast, had not assembled the rain cover for the tent, which meant that the entire mesh roof of the tent was exposed to the sudden monsoon that had struck.

When I finally reached the tent, it was already full of at least an inch of standing water. I tried to start disassembling it, but as my brother, who I had frantically dragged out to help me, put it bluntly, "Hannah, it's too late. Just get the sleeping bags out, and you'll have to let it dry out tomorrow." He then proceeded to crawl into the half-standing tent and drag out the soaking wet bags. I, not one to give up, continued taking apart the tent, hoping to dump the water out and get it somewhere dry before more damage could be done. Just as I placed it in the garage, the storm let up, and I collapsed onto the steps defeated. Movie Tent, would not happen that day.

A week later, the tent was fully dried and cleaned out, and the weather was promising. Cautiously, I set Operation Movie Tent in motion again. I lugged our tent up from the basement, and assembled it (this time being sure to put on the rain cover). I raided the linen closet (much to my mom's dismay), and over the span of no less than two hours I carefully decorated the tent. Christmas lights tied to the roof of the tent gave the space a warm feeling, which I hoped was just metaphorical, and not the actual tent melting or burning down. Blankets and pillows cushioned the ground, and made the space feel even more cozy. The final touch were the TV and snacks, which allowed the tent to actually serve its purpose of hosting movie night. It was a very Pinterest-worthy set-up, if I do say so myself.

Movie Tent was a success, until around midnight, when the two friends and I (who had decided to stay for a second feature), heard the distinct sound of a footstep outside of the tent over the movie that we were watching. We panicked about what to do. Not wanting to fall victim to the all-familiar cliches of a horror movie, we decided to not send someone out to investigate. Carefully we shone our flashlights through the windows of the tent, but saw nothing except the dark. We debated whether to close the windows and risk only being able to hear whatever was out there (as well as potentially being attacked while closing the windows), or to leave them open and risk the shock of watching whatever it was that was out there charge the tent. We chose to leave the windows open, and instead sat directly in the middle of the tent, backs to backs, as I called my dad to come save us.A little part of me was hopeful that when I called the house phone, one of my parents would pick up and explain that the other was actually outside checking on us, and that they had been the source of the noise, but that was not the case.

We never found out what made the noise (whether it was a squirrel, a raccoon, a deer, or something much more larger and sinister), but we did make it safely inside. Excluding the scare at the end, Movie Tent was a success. It marked the first successful completion of an item on my summer bucket list (which I will be making a post about soon). In the future, I would probably construct it again, but maybe inside this time, or during the day, when the spooky things that lurk in suburban backyards aren't out.