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As those of us of a certain age are compelled to do by the forces of nature, I found myself awake in the middle of the night, making my way in the dark (so as not to wake the home’s other occupants) toward the smallest room in the house — when I stumbled in the hall after catching my foot on a cardboard box. The cat was disturbed by this minor annoyance. The wife slept soundly through this calamity. We have more than our fair share of cardboard boxes in our home these days. Some are folded into shape and held together with falsely advertised “easy-to-use” tape (the dispenser for which requires both an advanced degree in mechanical engineering and the mastery of a Rubik’s Cube to operate). Others, such as the one I stumbled upon, and over, have yet to be employed for their primary purpose — which is to store things and stuff and whatnot (the weight of which won’t cause the falsely advertised “extra-strength” tape to break) for an impending move. (Yes, we are moving … but don’t get your hopes up. We’re simply headed to a new address; this column isn’t going anywhere — I know, I know, what else is new?) You might ask why the unfolded cardboard boxes were in the hall, instead of some stumble-proof place such as a closet. If you did, you would be told that a) there are other cardboard boxes in the closet and b) one of us had yet to find a compelling reason to move them somewhere else. Until, that is, he tripped, stumbled and fell over them … and, when he landed, it was no fun at all. Cardboard boxes have a colorful history — from appearing in Anne Bronte’s then-scandalous novel “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” in 1848 to being enshrined in the Toy Hall of Fame in 2005. These particular boxes came into our possession through more mundane channels — mainly, a friend who recently had moved was in possession of dozens that had served their primary purpose and were in the need of a new home. (The sharing of moving boxes, in scientific terms, is a corollary to the universal law of physics known colloquially as the Holiday Fruitcake Transference Principle.) Receiving this stash of cardboard required a rendezvous in a Medford bank parking lot — because, of course it did — and so, while I attended to transactions inside, she stayed with the car awaiting the arrival of the box supplier. When I emerged, I was in for a shock … for there was nothing to see. No boxes. No friends. No car. No … her. Presented with scant evidence of what might have happened, I did what any sensible husband would do and simply ran through the list of plausible and logical explanations as to what could have happened. Yeah, right … I panicked. Clearly, she had been forced into the car by some escaping bank robbers and told to drive them away from the soon-to-arrive authorities. Or, she had met up with her friends, transferred the boxes and joined them for lunch … forgetting I was in the bank. Or, and this was my working theory, I had walked through a crack in the space-time continuum and emerged in an alternate dimension wherein we had no need for cardboard boxes. This was a job for someone with a sharper mind than my own for mysteries — but Sherlock Holmes had solved “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box” in 1893 (and that had involved severed ears), while Calvin & Hobbes had long-retired the time-travel capabilities of the their transmogrifier. I would be left to my own devices to solve this case. Finding myself in an agitated state and being of a certain age, the forces of nature compelled me to head toward the smallest room in the bank — where I spent the few minutes inside wondering whether it was just these moments of my standing still that would make the crucial difference as to whether I’d ever again see my car. Now, it doesn’t take Sherlock or Hobbes to intuit that, since I later found myself in the middle of the night regaining my balance after my run-in with the ill-placed (not the word I used at the time) boxes, the situation at the bank ended not with a bang, but a whimper … on my part, at least; her response was somewhere between a giggle and a guffaw. (But while we’re on the subject, banks really shouldn’t have so many doors.) Boxes have started to be filled — some with necessities, others with falsely-advertised “treasured” items that we’ll treasure as much in the new place as we have here. Still other boxes remain in the hall, waiting to be taped together to haul away years of whatnots. Only now, these sheets of cardboard have a story behind them — of when I wasn’t deserted in a bank parking lot and she wasn’t kidnapped, or neither of us was lost to another dimension in time. It’s a story that will last forever … or, more likely, until we find someone else in need of moving boxes. Mail Tribune senior designer Robert Galvin’s email address isn’t changing. It remains [email protected].