Congratulations on Completing Construction!

It was several days ago when the seeds of Fort Cootiefree were first planted in your head. They came to you after Jessie from down the street rammed her tongue into your ear. You wanted to make a space where no man would ever have to endure such tortures again. And so the fort was born.

Since then you’ve collected couch cushions from half the neighborhood, bedsheets enough to blot out the sun. You’ve even acquired a pair of sedentary, socially outcast fifth graders who can use their superior size to guard the door and didn’t have anything better to do than help you.

And tomorrow you will complete the final phase of construction, hanging the vintage bead curtain your parents lent you as a gesture of good faith over the entrance and ensuring your freedom from the horror that is womankind for at least a month to come.

You will be hailed by other young men in the neighborhood as a hero and young women will stare awkwardly at you across the playground, mystified by your folk hero status and the quiet strength that must permit such an undertaking. Girls will attempt to gain entrance to your new utopia soon, and you need to organize your new republic and brace yourselves for the upcoming violence so that you can stay free.

Get at least three kids who know judo and someone’s dad’s gun and you’ll be okay for the first week. If suicide bombings start (and they probably will) just remember that you don’t want to be remembered as the kid who gave in to terrorism.

This is bigger than the tongue in the ear thing now. This is about remaining men, remaining free. If this fort is still standing at the end of the year it will become a rallying point for second-graders everywhere, a sign that they too can remain cootiefree.

And if it falls, no one will remember it happened come third grade, except that one kid no one likes who doesn’t shower and owns way too many Magic cards.

So congratulations on completing construction. It is a shockingly inventive piece of engineering for a second grader.