A thread for discussing boxes, metaphorical ones: not fitting into the box you’re supposed to, being in a mislabeled box, changing boxes, or even challenging them. What sorts of boxing matches (or mismatches) have affected you?
Patience, Please
This site is under reconstruction and will look strange for a while. We regret the inconvenience.
First post?
I am going to use boxes in the literal sense, for now.
We are a military family, so we move every two or three years. My dad has been to ‘school’ three times now, and everytime he goes he gets to keep the books he uses. Whenever we discuss this, my mom proceeds to say how we have sooooo many bookshelves and they’re all filled up, so the remaining boxes can’t be unpacked. And everytime we discuss this, I get confused. Since we unpacked what I thought to be the last box last year, I have been looking high and low for these mysterious, pestilent boxes, and I cannot find them. (she exaggerates a lot)
Our next move is the end of the school year, and we will then be living our life out of boxes (again).
I live in my own personal box, that much I know. It’s even got cute hot-pink wrapping paper!
(1) Alyss: Rebecca and I both grew up in military families, so we know exactly what you’re talking about.
Did you know that there’s a store where they just sell boxes? Different sizes, colors, whatever. It’s so cool!
There’s a store that sells boxes???OOOOHHH!!!! I must go buy one for the sake of buying one! (Or at LEAST to store my possesions in…) (Make that my towel) Seriously, though, I’m feeling so [figuiratively] (<–did I spell that right) boxed in (I’m having problems)
Alyssa-my aunt used to be in the army and I remeber how many times she got moved…
oh yeah, and so did my Grandpa
Anyway I’m really sad…my family is having medical issues and everyone’s treating me like a five year old…and I’m failing things…and I CAN’T STAND IT I WANT TO LEAVE NOW.
Box. They are very… boxy.
4 – That is freaking amazing. But Axe-Man and Five Below are better.
Metephorical box: We’ve been doing these projects at school and we all have to present them to the entire team. It’s insane and I feel like I’m in a box when we pack the 100 kids into a little room. It’s just so… boxlike and I feel so… I have no idea but I want to to get out.
I have my own box and I’m PROUD OF IT!
Seriously, no one I know is as turn-around in terms of likes/dislikes as I am. I like both classical and most spectrums of rock (classic rock, punk rock, pop rock – just no metal, please), for example.
One year I couldn’t think of what to get my dad for Christmas, so I gave him a stack of file boxes. He was happy. We may chafe against our metaphorical containers but we ♥ ♥ ♥ our material ones.
This seems to be getting off topic, and there are only 10 posts. We are already discussing real, as opposed to metaphorical, boxes.
Well, I live in a box. And I am quite, quite content to stay here. In my box, I am not up to date in the slightest on celebrity news (haven’t even heard of half the “celebrities” anyone talks about), I don’t know hardly any current music groups/artists, and I’ve not heard of most anybody that everybody thinks I should know everything about.
It’s a very nice box. I share it with my sister, and apparently the girl I sit next to in English, as well as her sister. But that’s ok. There’s lots of room in it.
Boxes, huh.
The first thing I think of is always checking other in the “what race are you” boxes on testing forms etc. Recently some of them say “check all those that apply” which is better. I’ve even seen some that say biracial/multiracial, though neither of those are really…races.
I’m hunting for my box. I can’t find it.
So, can metaphorical boxes be along the lines of “labels” or “cliques”? I’m going to assume so. As I’ve said in the last R&R thread, I pride myself in not fitting into these labels. I have Goth friends, nerdy friends, anime-freak friends, athletic friends, old friends, young friends, drama nerd friends, “popular” friends, etc., etc. Because of this, I’ve become my own genre of person and try to penecontemporaneously fit into and reject as many labels as possible. By way of rejecting, I don’t listen to any American music made after the year 1989. Foreign music can be newer. Y’know when teachers tell you, “Oh, just be yourself,” and you sorta gag and ignore them? I’ve actually found that advice to make my life rather interesting and enjoyable.
I’m not entirely sure that that was the correct sort of “box”, but I’ll go with it.
11- Me too. I appear to know a tad more about current “celebrity” events than you, but only a tad. That, I believe, is mainly because I love the show on E! called The Soup. Joel McHale is hilarious!
And I’ve added to the off-topicness of this thread. Sorry.
My box is quite roomy.
Some people know me as the “smart kid” who always gets amazing grades. The actual smart kids think I am of the lower section of that population. In class I’m sometimes the kid who will stall class and annoy the teacher. I’m really at a crossroad(Which is quite boxy by the way…). I want to have fun, but I want to start working hard in school. I’m in 7th grade, and my teacher said that I would be going into a regular class next year. I want to at least get the next section up, because I know I can handle it. I have to make sure that people know that my box has many sections. It’s a nice box, but it has it’s problems…
I used to have a very nice and snug box, to some extent inhabited by a few friends but mostly by me. Alas, the internet is crumbling it away, although the museblog fits into it well. Farewell, o box of my life… although in many respects, it is well preserved.
I think right now, I am searching for my box. I used to be quite comfortable in my box, but now I think I’ve outgrown it. It’s very strange looking at everyone else in their boxes and I’m just standing out here in the open.
7- go axman!!
I live all alone in a box with lots of sides, which you can never see all at once. Different people and places and times get to see different sides and some of the sides only I can see. I have different freinds on different sides and The sides are different sizes and can grow or shrink or dissapear or appear. my calm side is mostly showing now because i’m tired (and sick) but earlier today my insane side was in front and i also have nerdy, athletic, outdoorsy, quiet,loud, and many other sides. that sounded really cliche. Oh well.
I don’t know where my box is. It’s definitely not here(ohio).
I like cool shaped boxes and treasure chests.
I think my box is shared with Andy. We’re really close and nobody else really understands us the way we understand each other.
I think my box would be made of glass so I could see everything outside it and break out if I felt like it.
During the period of time between my last post and this one, I’ve become tired of my box. Not the box I described in 14. My daily life, my schedule. I suppose it’s a rather transcendentalist idea, but I’m tired of doing the same things day in and day out. I’m tired of the same rut, the same recurring actions, the same handful of days being repeated uncountable times. I’m tired of going through the same mindless actions day after day. Tired of just sleepwalking through life. Tired of the monotony. Tired.
No more.
4- My grandpa own a box company. He makes the boxes.
I have a unusual, multifaceted box.
I am the new kid.
I am the smart girl who always is getting her papers copied off of. (But is not smart enough to figure out how to make that sentence not end in a prepostition. I think the solution involves whom)
I am the band geek.
I am the wierd girl who’s everything is green.
My box has doors, and right now only a few people can come through the door at at time.
I want to be the preppy girl when I move. I want to be the one with the cute clothes from the big city, and I want a bigger box.
(that sounds really shallow, but I’m tired of being the smart, quiet one. I’ve out grown my box)
“12. Don’t think outside the box. Build a box.”
Kopimi Manifesto
20- Neo-transcendentalism? That sounds nice. A box in the country side where a box is used to make pretty boxes to hold fantastic boxes that will change the very nature of boxes. Ho-hum.
In grade six I had a box instead of a desk. Well, I had a desk but I also had a box. I find it really hard to remember that far back (only four years!). It was an ordinary box. Brown. Filled to bursting with papers and books tossed in willy-nilly. It was in a portable, which is basically a giant box. That portable meant so much to all of us. The carpet was nailed to the floor. Discusting. Cloudy or dust would billow up when a text books was dropped. Items hanging from the cieling. The hubcaps lining the walls. Grade six was a good year.
I box myself in, I shut people out. I like doing math on graph paper better than anything else. The way math sheets are formatted is terribly important to me. I like working with brackets. I’m that kid who goes to the library every lunch. Filling up the back tables with friends and aquaintances. We sit and read or draw or do homework. Depending on who’s there we’ll talk. Sometimes we get kicked out, not often. I’m the kid in math class who finnishes her worksheets while the teacher is doing question one on the overhead projector. I’m the kid who corrects the wording of questions on her science test. I make up secret codes when I’m bored. I try to create equations for how fruit tastes to me. I enjoy the idea of outdoors but once I’m there I don’t know what to do. I can fit into small places when it’s needed.
Ahhhhhhh!!!!!! Boxes-everywhere Syndrome has set in! I am turning into a box full of papers!!!! EEP!
Honestly, though, everybody keeps telling me that I can think outside the box. What box???!!!! The one on my head????? Or the metephorical “boxed in way of thinking?” (<<—- probably that one)
=]
“Real” boxes:
I’ve always liked real boxes, for storage, hiding, building stuff out of… *sniff* I’m not claustrophobic, and I like to hide in small, dark spaces when I’m depressed.
“Virtual” boxes:
I hate those boxes. In kindergarten, lots kids made fun of me because my ideas were “too different”. I guess I’ve always been an outside thinker in that sense…
Social boxes:
This is another one of the reasons why I freak the kids in my class out. I find a box and try to befriend its inhabitants. I seem to fit into it, but then I do something weird and don’t. I busted the “studious, smart girl” and the “cool and rebellious” ones in the same semester, being the best in several subjects as “cool and rebellious” and refusing to let people copy my homework during the “studious and smart” phase on the premises that I hadn’t done it myself. I always try to fit into a box, but then do a random act of Myself-ness and bust it again. *fumes slightly*
(I have problems with formatting. None of that should be italicized. Please pardon post 21.)
25, on virtual boxes- We were doing testing for GT in kindergarten, and I was asked how many fingers I had. I said that I had eight fingers, and two thumbs. The interviewer marked that question wrong, until my mom talked to her, that my answer was ‘showed intelligence and wit’. She ended up changing it.
(26) Yay for you! And for your mom!
A long time ago I read about a test question that asked, “which of these pictures shows a man working?” Among the choices, a man reading a book and one chopping wood. The girl checked the picture of the man reading, because her father was a writer or professor or some such and chopping wood was something he did to relax.
22- Not necessarily the country. Just something new, something unexpected, even by me.
My box has many layers. Going in, it gets smaller. In the innermost layer only I can be. Moving outward, my close friends and family are there, then the people I know from school and taekwondo classes.
My social box is convoluted beyond imagination. I’m a geek throughout, content with my own company, the loud-ish, random girl in my group of friends, etc. At one point in fifth grade I sat at a table with the popular girls, but I never considered myself to fit in their box. It was small and crowded and shallow.
I am in no social ‘box’; I’m friends with a lot of people.
In elementary school there were three boxes: The “Socially weird girls”, the “Classically weird girls”, and the guys. the camps got along fine, but we classically weird girls all agreed that the social weirdos were really prep pupae.
When I read this thread, I think of a woman who lives in ireland where farmland and the wild shake hands, and makes thousands of beutiful, magical boxes. I imagine them in flying colors, spilling over with magic that looks like everything from stardust to purple paint to a summer evening back east.
That in turn reminds me of Ultra Maniac. Spamola!!!
30 – I’m right there with you on that one.
19- Loud-ish… I know what you mean. That’s funny that you describe yourself that way.
in my schoool u cant beileive it im like asked out by every boy and flirted with and all the boys girlfriends are lik omg why are u talking to her shes not posh im like mwahaha yto those evil girls
i am the smart girl
the sweet girl the unpatient girl
sighhhhh the cute girl i know it horrible
my box now is wavering am i to the next level of popularity or not
i think im getting a new boz
Hello, mademoiselle Neophyte. Welcome to MuseBlog! First, please, please, please use capitalisation, spelling, grammar, etc. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb if you continue posting as you are. Second, try to fit all you want to say into one post — multiple posts become annoying and unnecessary. I suggest going to the Neophyte Welcoming Page in order to better grasp the basic concepts of MB. I hope you enjoy your stay!
In reality, there is The Box. I wrote a song about it, once. It used to hold a marimba. I think Potato Chip’s parents threw it out. It held at least four people. Inside it (or near it, it got crowded…) we were safe, we could talk about things, even awkward things and people. We don’t need the box anymore, once it gets late at night.
There are also the boxes we use as drums in our band.
Metaphorically. I just realized how strange I am, and how my friends are the freaks, sometimes the emos, the ones in black with colorful hair. And I’m happier than I was before. The smart people rejected me for being too nerdy, once, but now it’s better because we’re older and some of them caught up to me. This is my box, it is my clique, but it’s okay. I’m different and that’s all right, finally there’s a box I fit in. Of course, I still don’t fit all the stereotypes, but people have just learned to fear me because that’s the way Dodecahedron is.
Disclaimer: This post written in the order things occur to me. Don’t spend to much time trying to season it out.
4- There are many. I like the Container Store. SO many different *types* of boxes!!
I heard somewhere UPS/FedEx will send you free boxes. Not sure if you have to be mailing something or not. But I need a bunch and a ton of packing tape so I can build my huge Loch Ness Monster (Nessie!) and set her afloat in my lake.
23- I love graph paper. I have graph paper notebooks for calc/physics, and I wish I’d been using them for longer than I have. Before this year I probably wouldn’t really have connected with your post, but I just love calculus now. Couldn’t do algebra, geometry was okay, pre-calc good, calc amazing. Maybe it’s the level of teaching–I have the same teacher I had last year and will have him again next year, and he is the only one who’s actually managed to teach me math versus me having to work it all out on my own at home. It used to be the only class I got a B in in middle school, and now it’s probably one of my best. This may have to do with being put in honors instead of AP because there wasn’t enough room and they wanted to take mostly seniors not the accelerated juniors first, but that’s the same material just a bit faster.
But I am finally understanding how all of it works, usually before the teacher even starts explaining. I can fill it in in the graph paper boxes (in neat rows and spacing and straight) and even though it takes longer to make it all fit right I usually finish fast anyway. Now I do homework for calc when I want to because I enjoy it rather than needing to.
Sorry for maths rant, but to me calculus is kind of a box. One that I know where it goes and how things fit into it and I can work everything inside it. It’s the only thing that’s like that right now… I used to not like math because it wasn’t arbitrary, but now I completely understand the other point of view.
I box myself in more than I probably should…
20- Word. I need to get out of the box of a building they call school and see the world.
–
I don’t think of people in social circles or boxes anymore. I feel like they must exist somewhere in the school, this popular elite you sometimes hear about, but I don’t think I’ve had more than a vague glimpse of it in the halls since leaving middle school. It’s quite nice. I can’t tell if this is just our school or what, but that seems very unlikely. So I guss you middlings out there worried about boxes and circles–don’t, really, in high school the freshman like that who for whatever reason care are so busy trying to figure out where the boxes are they get a bit lost, the people who are themselves continue to be so and blend/fit/enter [bleh none of these is the right verb) in nicely and the upperclassman usually just don’t care anymore.
On actual boxes–I love them, I used to have a lot on my dresser with things in them but then when I was away at tennis camp last summer mom invaded my room and threw them out and tried to !*^#(_@$^(_$^+! organize everything, aka throw most of it away and get rid of the boxes and I am still quite angry about it. She didn’t even understand why though.
But I found a nice set of boxes/small bins in the closet that nest in each other…
38- my school is also remarkably and pleasantly un-boxish. However, this could merely be a result of not paying any attention to which pseudo-humanoids happen to be popular. My personal box is also being attacked by my parents, to some extent.
Okay,okay im sorry. Im also boxed in by my parents. Also public you are so lucky! My school it goes like this from lowest to highest: ultra posh rich kids, poshes who are stuck up, nice and smart populars, smart kids with steady supply of friends, normal kids, geeks, idiots, ick. i am at smart kids being pushed up to popular nice smart kids. I hate it! I wish theyd all just stop being stuck up. also my box is being interrupted with boys who are all over me. The boy who i like never gives me a second glance. help muse bloggers!!!!!!
Once my boyfriend gave me a hoy pink bunny valentine. I nearly screamed at the horror. Those pictures are so freaky
Excuse me for that comment, i meant for the hoy pink bunny blog.
37: I’ve never thought of cardboard boxes as drums! Your band… seems really cool. When I was six or so my best friend got a new fridge, you could fit like six people in the box.
Did you know that the boxes used for safely preserving lava fall apart if you spill milk on them?
Oh! With GS cookie boxes, sometimes you tap out rhythms on them!
My box is one where I have a superfast computer with internet access and a simulated real world. That’s all I need.
Cardboard boxes make excellent bedside tables.
Yesterday when I got into the school of my choice, I walked to the kitchen to get some tortilla chips and I saw 2 packages on the table from the school. I thought, What the heck? The thick one’s for my parents and mine has a bulge and it’s squishy. I ripped mine open and it was a…SCHOOL TOTE BAG! An acceptance note came with it. My parents’ package held all the forms and the course list.
SFTDP.
I can fit in my locker, and my school has the teeny ones where there are three rows. The Idiot tried to lock me in, but there was one fatal flaw in his plan: our school doesn’t allow padlocks.
SFTTP.
My metaphorical box is not really a box; it’s more of a bowl with different types of noodles. The noodles are different choices, different social groups. My taste in noodles varies. In real life, I like those long thin ones.
GAPAs- spam alert? Look at post 46!
(49) Thanks, Daisy*chain. I got it.
Spam? I was talking about a package, thanks. *turns up nose*
What spam?
I like boxes–as in, the tangible kind. They’re helpful for organization and storage, and I frequently find them very handy. It seems that many other people like boxes, too. Because of this, I think people create metaphorical boxes. Our minds need organization, and automatically segregate and categorize, even if they don’t mean to.
51, 52- Rebecca zapped it, so it no longer exists. The current post 46 used to be 47, but now that the spam has been deleted, everything shifted. That happens on MuseBlog now and again.
I don’t like things that aren’t in their boxes. I need to know who somone it and where I can file them away. I’m totally against steryotypeing but do it for every single thing i come across. I’ve come to the conclution that boxes are my fallback plan, so i don’t have to work and see who someone really is. The problem with my solution is that my boxes are made of dust and will be blown apart at any notice.
I don’t like people who I can catagorize though, I mean, friend wise. If I can catagorize them they don’t have enough complexities for me to think well of them. (again, I’m steryotypeing, I’m sorry) So I have a hard time makeing friends becuase I don’t like pulling people out of my boxes.
Boxes are awesome, especially when they’re covered with duct tape, or duck tape, depending on what kind you use. It can also be Nashua tape. Either way, it is awesome.
Once we got our kitchen redone and i made a small cottage out of the boxes. I was 6.
I have many different boxes. My friends from high school who were my year, friends from high school who were older than me, friends from high school who were younger, friends from college, alums of my college and their friends, other friends that are older than me, friends from MB etc, etc.
57- You do know that the word I isn’t only supposed to be capitalized in the beginning of a sentence, right?
There are absolutely no boxes in my life. I do not live in a box – I am completely uncontained. I flow and shift with the currents of the people around me and change my shape as needed/wanted. I do the same things almost every day and yet no one would describe me as predictable. I do not wear masks and I do not fit into a stereotype. Nor do I “file people away” – I let them make their own “file”. And that is how you see the true beauty of everyone, even if you doubt it could possibly exist.
Cheah.
59- You do know that the word “I” should be in quotations in your post, right?
Boxes,
*sings* Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same
Yeah, that’s how I would look at it.
60- congatulations… thats unusual
43- Well, it’s me and a few friends who can play instruments and get bored and don’t own a full drum kit… yes, we are pretty awesome.
I think that metaphorical boxes are mostly self-chosen and overlapping. Maybe they exist in the fourth or fifth dimension.
Sorrry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I personally love metaphorical filing cabinets and boxes. My brain is essentially organized as the library of the Clayr from the Abhorsen Series. For those who haven’t read it, it’s a large spiral shaped neverending library inside a glacier. It’s stuffed with books and treasures and boxes and everything. I love to roam around through it. Metaphorical filing of people is also something I enjoy. It’s good to categorize people. They’re easier to handle that way. I don’t see filings as restrictive, more just as a way of keeping organized.
Boxes are 3 dimensional squares….and squares are evil…
O.o
Not evil, just different.
Boxes? I had a (Social) box a long time ago. But then I smashed it with MuseBlog.
I am a fan of Malvina Reynolds.
Oh, I remember this thread!
Hmm, boxes…I remember when we got a new refrigerator a couple years ago, and I was able to play with the box in which it came. I had a lot of fun with that box, decorating it and whatnot. Perhaps I should go convince my parents to buy another refrigerator.