The First Year

Monday, March 22, 2010

How Many Freshmen Can You Fit in a Closet-Size Room?

Posted by Braden

Yesterday, we fit these 28 manly men and one woman . . .


. . . into this 1 x 2 x 2.5–yard entryway between two apartments:


Why did we do it? Because we could. Because it was there. Because we got to talking one day--when five of us got in each other's way as we were walking in and out at the same time--and somebody thought out loud, "I wonder how many boys we could fit in here if we really tried?"

So Saturday night I collected a bunch of boys and we really tried. First we made two rows of boys and loaded them in. Then we tossed a boy on top. Then we loaded another couple rows of boys. We tossed another boy on top. We shoved some more boys in the entryway. Then we shoved a third and fourth boy on top. Then we found a way to fit a boy in under the legs of the other boys. Then we ran out of boys, so we grabbed a girl and stuffed her in there as well. Then we shut the door, for closure's sake.

We all climbed out, and the couple-dozen girls in the hallway, who'd been watching and taking pictures, counted as we came out of the room like clowns out of a clown car: "1, 2, 3, . . . 27, 28, 29!"

My, what a beautiful thing! It was tight, for sure. In fact, I couldn't move until after 12 of the boys were already out. And it got pretty hot in there. But think about what we were able to do! We had 5.8 boys per cubic yard! And these weren't little boys either—we had a lot of rather big boys in there!

Here are a few photos of the loading process:







The sign on the door of that last picture was absolutely true: "Warning: Contents may be very hot and extremely habit forming." (It's a phrase from a Blackjack pizza box.)

Much fun was had by all . . . but we're not satisfied yet. We think we can fit at least 33 if we pack a little more intelligently, fit a few more between the boys' legs, and save our littlest people for on top. So we're currently working on plans for an encore performance: bigger, better, and even more manly than the first extravaganza!

1 comment:

ldsjaneite said...

Ha ha ha! That looks way more fun than our ~10 people in a phone booth. So glad there were pictures. You know, girls tend to be smaller. You could fit in a lot that way--as long as they could hold some above them. Oh, I miss the days.