Blog

Entry 1

Hi, I’m Shelfie.

I assume you’ve heard about my adventures in the miserable outdoors from my owners at Shield. It probably sounds super cheery and not horrible. Well, not everything you read on the internet is true. A lot of things—such as, just as a random example, the Shieldren’s account of what happened to me—are misconstrued.

Let me tell you my version of events. In September 2014, the Shieldren told me I was going on a luxurious, ten-month, all-expenses-paid vacation and, like any normal cabinet, I was stoked. I was jamming out to the Beach Boys as I packed my screws and tools in preparation for the trip. Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, Bahama—I couldn’t wait. Time to sip pina coladas, lie out on the beach and get a tan (because, let’s be honest, my pearly white exterior just wasn’t the right complexion for me.)

Then I arrived at my “vacation” spot: a tree trunk in the middle of a large overgrown field. The Shieldren nailed me to the trunk, set a camera up in front of me (I guess to mock me—sickos) and left.

I stayed out there for ten months. Ten. Months. By myself. I endured a wildfire, heavy storms, freezing winter snows, dirt and bugs, and intense heat. I had no companions aside from the occasional spider. I was the Tom Hanks of Cast Away, and I didn’t even have a Wilson. I think it’s safe to say I now have abandonment issues.

After a brutal ten months, on a hot day in the middle of July, I heard the slight hum of a car engine coming down the long drive towards my tree stump. My screws began to sweat. Could someone really be coming for me? Indeed, after a few minutes, a truck appeared. The Shieldren had finally remembered me. I was a mess of emotions—happy to be saved, mad that I’d been put in this situation in the first place, hungry for a steak, angry that I was completely incapable of eating steak because I’m a cabinet… it was a whirlwind.

After a brief cleaning in a car wash and a long drive home, I made it back to the Shield office. I tried to be mad at the Shieldren, but they kept saying how great I looked after ten months in the wilderness and, well, I’m a sucker for compliments.

They stuck me on their wall and said I get to stay there forever as a testament to my amazing strength and durability, and I mean, how can I argue with that?

Totally lying. I can rant about this experience forever, but I won’t right now. Stay tuned for journal entries detailing my experience in the outdoors, coming soon.

Entry 2

It had been nearly three weeks on my tree stump. I’d adjusted to the initial feeling of shock and despair, and I’d like to think I was holding up fairly well. It was nearing the end of September, so it wasn’t terribly hot or brutally cold…yet. I was still pretty irritated with the whole situation, but I was managing.

Luckily for me, I’d seen Cast Away enough times to know that what I really needed to do was stay occupied. No periods staring out aimlessly into the field, wondering if it was even worth the fight. No negativity. If I just kept my mind busy and my emotions positive, I’d be okay. But those thoughts vanished on Day 20 of my abandonment. I’d been trying to keep myself occupied by counting the number of wild animals I saw. One hungry bear. Two prancing deer. Three feral cats. Four flappy birds.

I was on my way to a partridge in a pear tree when something landed on me. And it was moving. I heard its feet click. Then a chirp. It was a bird! Finally, a companion.

Then it happened. The bird…deposited something on me. 

That was it. One little drop was all it took. Everything I’d been suppressing bubbled to the surface, and I cracked.

The bird flew away like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but me? I was livid. What kind of thing just deposits its droppings on you? I mean, it would be one thing if I was sitting in a crowded field with hundreds of targets, and I just happened to be picked. But I was sitting in the middle of a completely barren field. Hundreds of feet of totally uninhabited grass and weeds. I occupied, what, a couple square feet of land, and this bird randomly decided to drop its unwanted goods on me? I don’t think so.

It was the first time I really let my emotions get to me. After a few hours, I finally calmed down and began to think rationally. I was fine. Nothing super dramatic had happened. My door was still opening and shutting. Everything was cool. I just needed to clean myself off.

Of course, I was powerless to do much at the moment. Not having arms or legs kind of hinders the self-cleaning process, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that, when it rained—and it surely would soon because this is the good ol’ midwest and rain happens all the time—the bird poo would come right off, stain-free. If I just reminded myself that my nonporous, stain-resistant exterior would be the same pure white it had been before this whole ordeal started, that would keep me sane.

And it did. For a little while anyway. 

Entry 3

Cool. Chilly. Cold. Icy. Wintry. Arctic. Bitter. Biting. Cutting. Frigid. Numbing. Did I just google every synonym for cold I could find? Maybe, but who cares. It was freezing out there by early December, and I was chilled to the core.

Chattering screws, watering hardware, frozen doors. I thought I’d seen the worst of it, but it’d only just begun. On day 93, early in the morning, I noticed a distinct change in the wind.  I’d woken up after a night of on-and-off sleep—a restless night I’d come to accept as normal in these frigid outdoors—and immediately tried to occupy my mind with thoughts of fires and hot cocoa and blankets. But the wind distracted me. It was stronger. The sky was darker. Everything seemed to be covered with a soft, white-gray tint.

Snow was coming. I just knew it. I could feel it in my knees. (Full disclosure: I don’t know what that saying means, and I don’t have knees, but I’ve heard it several times before and decided to give it a try.)

I spent the better half of the morning trying not to cry about the imminent weather, not because I was trying to seem tough but because I knew if I cried, the tears would freeze on my exterior and only make me colder.

But by noon, the snow had moved in. It started out soft, with just a few flurries off and on. Some stuck to me, but the wind was strong enough that nothing settled for long. I was freezing, but at least I wasn’t covered in snow.

Seconds later, the flakes pulled a Grinch heart and tripled in size, and it took only a few minutes for accumulation to begin. Snow was rapidly piling up, covering the base of my tree trunk. Things were starting to get real bad.

In a few hours, there were at least 3 inches of snow on my head (again, I don’t actually have one of those), and the level was getting dangerously close to the top of the trunk. Any more and I would be surrounded. Already, I was so cold. The wind was biting, and the snow layering up all around me only made it worse. I couldn’t feel my screws. My thoughts were occupied by the intense pain I was feeling. I tried my very best to think only warm thoughts, but mental images of crackling fires were quickly blown out by a strong, cold wind.

I was losing hope, but I knew if I wanted to stay alive, I needed to act, so I changed my approach. I reminded myself of my water-resistance. (No cold-resistance, unfortunately, but I had to focus on the positives.) I’m nonporous, so water can’t penetrate my surface. No water inside me meant I’d stay warmer, and it also meant I wouldn’t just break down with moisture. I’m strong. I was made for this kind of weather. I knew I could survive. I knew I could walk out of this snowstorm in good condition.

That day was certainly dreadful, but it was important to my survival in that field. The many cold, snowy days that followed weren’t nearly as hard. I’d learned how to cope—by remembering my strong, durable properties—and that made everything so much better.

For a little bit.

Entry 4

Crying. That’s what I felt like doing. I’d been strong these past few months through the bird droppings, the cold, the snow, the solitude. I’d done my best to hold out. But I was exhausted. Part of me truly just wanted to call it quits, but the other part knew I needed to continue the fight. The mental and physical exhaustion compounded on day 209, and tears felt both inevitable and necessary.

But the outdoors took even this pleasure from me. On that day, instead of enjoying a quiet cry by myself in the solitude and comfort of my empty field, the sky opened its tear ducts and released hours of heavy, hard rain onto me. Of course. The outdoors had a way of always stealing my thunder.

None of us here is a stranger to hard, pouring rain. We’ve all driven through a bad rainstorm or sat inside on the couch, listening to the drops pound down on the windows. Which is fine. But that’s nothing compared to being stuck outside throughout the entire horrible event, with absolutely nothing to cover or protect you from the beating down rain and strong winds.

It wasn’t so much painful as it was the tipping point of my emotional ship. I’d dealt with so much already. My mind was exhausted. Honestly, all I wanted was a good cry—a few hours of just letting all of the emotion out. I just wanted a moment for myself, without any interruptions. And then the rain hit.

I didn’t have a repeat bird incident. I wasn’t fuming for hours about the rain or mentally writing a mean blog post about it. I was just… sad. The pouring rain and intense winds were nothing compared to the way I was feeling inside. My heart was breaking. My imaginary mouth was permanently drooped. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so upset in my life.

After many, many hours of relentless rain, the drops began to slow and, eventually, stop. The clouds gradually faded away, and so did my gloom. The sun peeked out and shone brightly in the sky. I guess my mood at that moment was super susceptible to mimicking the weather, because with every ray that touched me, my thoughts lightened. I began to look back quite fondly on the rainstorm that had brought me to my lowest point.

Sure, the rain had put a bit of a damper on things (get it?), but I’d made it through all right. Just as when I faced heavy moisture from the heat or cold water from the snow, I held up. Water couldn’t bring me down. Stains wouldn’t stick around. Cold had no effect.

Nothing could break me.

Go back to Shelfie’s homepage