Trapped in a Box

You frequently hear people say they feel “boxed in” as way of saying they are trapped. The musical group No Doubt combined these two idioms for their song Trapped In a Box, which never became a big hit. But do these people and rockers really know what it’s like to be trapped in a box or boxed in literally? I doubt it.

I have experienced both. When I was a young college student I worked at the campus bookstore in the warehouse portion. My coworkers and I had great fun. We utilized the boxes and packing materials to construct cardboard armour and weapons and we played a game called ‘gladiators’, which was a simple sparring game. We had swords made of cardboard and even a cool mace made out of cellophane. But we quickly felt the need to expand on this mythology.

When we were asked to store several hundred boxes in the warehouse we constructed a maze out of the boxes and then built a cardboard Minotaur. Later we expanded the box maze to include other dangers than the Minotaur such as a giant ball of cellophane. We had a big hydraulic garage door on the loading dock and actually recreated a scene from Indiana Jones where the giant boulder of cellophane would tumble down box mountain and we would have to outrun it and slide out as the hydraulic door was closing. Extra points if you could make your hat fall off and snatch it from under the closing door.

Things got a bit ridiculous when we added a sci-fi element by building a robot out of boxes called ‘Robox’. Sometimes one of us would put on Robox and act as him. This was sort of when the glory days started to jump the shark, but I would never say I felt boxed in, in a negative sense, and I reflect on my box years as some of the best times I’ve had in a working environment. And I don’t think anybody who’s ever had the kinds of experiences that I have had would ever write a song referring to themselves as ‘trapped’ in a box.

So next time you feel boxed in, just make yourself a box maze and gladiate against your buddy. Every box has a silver lining.

Cheers