Surrounded by hissing Gorn on the horizon, we huddled behind the thermocrete battlements, phasers and photon grenades at the ready as the scorching sun of Cestus pounded away at us on the surface of its third planet...
This was our particular variation on that once-ubiquitous suburban kid phenomenon – the couch pillow fort.
Men and women of a certain age know this edifice well: an improvisational structure assembled from cushions scavenged from sofa, easy chair, and any other convenient source, augmented by blankets as needed, into an impregnable fortress – a bulwark against advancing perils, seething evil intent on our extermination. We would hunker down with our cap guns and squirt guns and broom handles and prepare for seize, scanning the horizon for invading hordes.
It wasn’t always so ominous, of course; sometimes the couch cushion fort was merely a clubhouse, or just a getaway from parents. We’d pack in a flashlight and a stack of comic books and enjoy our makeshift peace.
Alternately, we would scatter the cushions across the living room or family room floor, spacing them three or four feet apart – with the understanding that the carpet was hot lava, and that to touch it was to risk instant incineration. The deep shag seethed with liquid death, and would vanquish us in seconds. We had to leap from cushion to cushion, maintaining what precarious balance we could, lest we vanish into the molten maelstrom like Gollum yielding to the fires of Mt. Doom.
Mom was cool with it, as long as we took our shoes off.
In hindsight, my fond reminiscence is more than just sweet nostalgia for a joy that subsequent generations have skipped over; it’s a reflection on the nature of those couch cushion forts and spumous lava pits...
...hastily thrown-together bastions of imagined invulnerability, defending dubious postures and providing ephemeral comfort... imaginary menace, provoking faux existential dread and wails of impending extermination and oblivion.
Had I paid closer attention, I’d have seen all this as quintessential preparation for a fruitful career in a Republican Congress.
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