Boxy was a box, and his personality changed depending on what was inside him. If someone put an apple inside him, he felt healthy. If someone put a match inside him, he felt angry and worried. If someone put a book inside him, he felt smart. Boxy lived in a huge house on the edge of town, on top of a hill that overlooked all the other houses. He was very rich. His father, Arthur Q. Box, had been a businessman who had invented the parking meter and the drinking glass and many other common items and become a multi-millionaire, and Boxy had grown up with all the advantages a young box could want. Every night he was filled up with gold coins and jewelry, and in the morning a butler put the finest soaps and towels inside him. At some point Boxy became aware that he was only feeling the way he was feeling because of what had been placed inside him, and that when he tried to bring to mind a clear picture of himself, he saw nothing, only empty space and the terror that came with it. He spent all night awake, many nights in a row, thinking of a plan, and then he worked up the courage to put that plan into action. Boxy pressed the button next to his bed to call the butler, and then asked the butler to put a smaller box inside him without telling him what was inside that smaller box. The butler obliged. Since Boxy didn’t know the contents of the smaller box, he had to imagine them, and the process of imagining was what gave him his own feelings. And with this, he began to become himself.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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