When Sheila Worth came to work that Monday morning wearing a corrugated cardboard box and little else, it brought barely a hint of the commotion to come. We were, after all, inside a Burlington, WI, Packaging Corporation of America plant, where hulking machines crank out thousands of boxes daily. We PCAers likely dream of boxes, I know I do, and some workers now and then do get goofy with them: eat lunch inside a big one, wear a smaller one as a helmet, draw their dog Jojo’s face on one and pretend it’s him.
            One long-timer, Burt, lurched around one day inside a triple-large, like a robot, yelling, “Danger, Will Robinson!”
            The pay and benefits are okay, but the plant’s noise and monotony, its sped-up pace, it can get to folks.
            Though surprised to see the firmly private Sheila in a box, in public, we line grunts didn’t think she’d gotten batty. Most took it as a quick one-off; a front office-approved bit of amusement to lighten our extra-heavy summer workload. It brought scattered laughs, some not-too-lewd comments, a few photos, maybe a quick video or two. Then we all went and made boxes.
            I said Sheila was private, but she’s never cold. At lunch that day, she fielded amused remarks (variations on “Some outfit!” or “You’re a character, who knew?!”) with her calming smile and a soft thank you. Her face, all quiet strength and kindness, sent out the same beam that hooked me when she started at PCA six months earlier. Her short black hair, flecked with some grays, led to a neck rising gracefully from cardboard. Sheila’s torso was covered by the box, but her face was what I usually peeked at anyway.
            And that box she wore? It was special. A custom-made, reinforced amalgam of different PCA types, it featured a cute ‘collar’ and ‘short sleeves,’ plus an ‘accordion saddle’ that allowed her to easily sit down. It also had latches she could flip to step in and out of it with no fuss. It was an expert piece of craftsmanship, but considering Sheila’s engineering degree from Marquette, that wasn’t a shocker unless one was shocked that she wore it.
            Sheila didn’t look silly inside that box. Instead, its tidy, functional neatness somehow accented her appeal, heightened it, and that’s not just me being gaga over her. Other workers, too, kept glancing over and smiling, not sneering. It seemed to give us a little boost, at least most of us. A few were wary of Sheila being in management while also working the line with us grunts twice a week. A spy, they thought. Wrong. Having long been up in Milwaukee with PCA’s competition, she wished to do some line work again, and do it in a small town. She got her wish.
            So there she was, down on the line on a warm summer’s day in her quirky charmer of a box. All seemed right and well. Until the next morning when she again arrived in a you-know-what. I saw some raised eyebrows, nervous double takes, spinning fingers at the sides of heads. No one had expected a repeat performance, not on the very next day, and certainly not again the day after that. It was fine with me, as you know, gaga, smitten, but other PCAers, not so much.
            On Wednesday, day three, Sheila walked through some chatting grunts to get to the office, and Benny Simaluca, always direct, remarked, “What the hell, Sheila! Still in a box?!”
            Sheila offered him her generous smile, said, “Hi Benny,” and went on up.
           Thursday and Friday, Sheila, in a box. Five days, five different boxes. The side-eying and murmurs multiplied.
            Benny didn’t murmur. “Put on some clothes already, crazy woman!” he boomed.
            Sheila, again, just smiled at him. But right after Benny’s outburst, loudspeakers blared her name and up to the front office she went. A very short while later, surprising us, Sheila returned. Still in her box.
            Millie had loitered near the VP’s door and she kindly fed me the play-by-play particulars from Gil Bradley, VP, “Sheila, you know you’re a valued member of management. We allowed you some line work, and we smiled with the rest when you wore a box on Monday. But you can see you’re now creating a disturbance. The grun.., ah, the workers’ line efficiency is dropping. Time to return to appropriate attire. If you have real clothes on site, have at it. Better yet, take the rest of the day off and return on Monday. You can work out whatever it is you’re going through.”
            Sheila Worth, Senior Engineer: “I’m going through nothing other than life, Gil, and there’s no company language mandating ‘appropriate’ attire. ‘Respectful’ is the term used. My attire is different, yes, but it’s respectful. As to the ‘disturbance,’ I’m confident that any over-excited reactions to my choice of workwear will soon lessen, then disappear.”
            “Are you saying you’ll continue to wear a box? Next week? Even longer?”
            “Yes, Gil. Feel free to discuss with any ‘disturbed’ colleagues the efficiency-lessening reactions you say they’re experiencing. I’ll head back to the line now. I hope Jane and the kids are well.”
            So Sheila stuck to her guns, or her boxes, inside and outside the plant, and in the next week came a wave of pumped-up interest. Many PCAers, against company rules, posted a raft of in-plant videos of her. More Sheila videos flowed forth online from locals inside Berkot’s Super Foods, Zumpano’s Pizzeria, Blackbird Bakery, etc., and from passersby on the street.
            For whatever reason these things occur, the Sheila-In-The-Box phenomenon spread like, yes, a virus. It just blew up. Scores of video snippets, a mountain of comments, were posted. I tried to but couldn’t resist peeking at some comments. Some did show support or concern for Sheila, some just made silly jokes, but enough spewed vile troll-like poison that I had to stop reading.
            Overall, it seemed that the public, or that portion of it who make online comments, decided that Sheila’s wearing boxes was either, 1) a lonely cry for attention 2) a mental health cry for help 3) a ‘woke’ statement/protest 4) an ‘anti-woke’ statement/protest. She was a ‘loony’ or a ‘prophet,’ a ‘miserable, childless nuisance’ or ‘an empowered feminist visionary exposing the intersection of misogyny and materialism.” A mouthful, that one.
            People of course tend to see what they want to see, and myself, I saw it simply as Sheila one day choosing to wear a box and then liking it.
            Two more weeks passed and all the clamor, instead of reaching a peak and fading, grew even louder as events reached dizzying heights of ridiculousness. Television vans lined up across South Pine from PCA’s parking lot. Workers couldn’t talk to reporters on PCA property, but once through the gates and over to the vans, tongues did flap. Camera crews also stalked Sheila’s two-bedroom ranch in the Lake St. neighborhood and stomped around our usually mellow downtown. Some locals told the media hounds to get lost, but some others lapped up the mini-limelight and bloviated on camera. None of them really knew Sheila, not well. But she was offered up to our ‘culture wars’ and her ‘story’ dominated the morning and afternoon talk shows. Or so said my retired aunt, Gilda.
            As talking heads and politicians battled over whether Sheila embodied our society’s demise or showed its ‘can-do’ individuality, the invasion of Burlington continued. Groups of outsiders came in to demonstrate for or against Sheila and her boxes, or yell at each other, or gawk and stare. Wisconsin State Patrol officers helped Burlington PD confine people to the other side of Sheila’s street, and two BPD officers now escorted her in and out of work at PCA, against her objections.
            One group of twenty or so women wearing boxes, none nearly as clever or cute as Sheila’s, made the scene. They chanted, “Sheila Worth, not a ‘chick’ or a ‘fox,’ just a good woman, using a box!” “Women stuck in boxes every day, it’s time to blow the oppression away!” I suppose I understood their sentiments, but still wished those women would themselves blow away, along with all the shit-stirring reporters and lookie-loos.
            Meanwhile, the media’s digging into Sheila’s life came up with not too much. Age forty-three (my elder by a year), no children, born Sheila Anne Worth in Milwaukee, raised there, Marquette grad, divorced from Ted Ames eight years earlier, regularly tended her front and side gardens, and occasionally competed in Erector Set tournaments for adults (I wasn’t aware of those, either). Also, big bulletin notice, she once a week picked up a small takeout cheese pizza from Zumpano’s. I already knew much of this, thanks to HR Millie.
            The online hubbub, the raging media circus, the nosy, noisy mob of visitors; none of it was really about Sheila herself and she knew that. She gave zero statements, appeared on no shows, kept calmly smiling as she navigated her way past onlookers, and continued to come to work at PCA (in any one of her growing number of impressive box designs).
            Sheila’s prediction that “over-excited reactions would soon lessen and disappear” took an extra while to come true. More than two full months after her boxwear debut, all the crowds, all the vans, and, hopefully, all the dumb drama over Sheila’s boxes, were finally done and gone. Burlington more or less returned to its small-town self, and a milder pace settled back into place.
            It wasn’t until then, with Fall’s colors in full blaze, that I finally talked, truly talked, to Sheila. I asked her to meet me one Saturday morning at Echo Lake Park. I brought Blackbird Bakery treats.
            I led off with, “Another new box, yes? It’s remarkable and becoming, as are all your others.” I almost added, “As are you, as well,” but I swallowed that one.
            “Thank you, Maria. And thanks for all your supportive words at work, right from the start of it.”
            “My pleasure, and those words were maybe as much about admiring as supporting.” I feared that was too strong, so I quickly added, “Hey, you’ve done Erector Set tournaments. I would stink at that, no doubt. I used to compete in tournaments, too. Womens’ Arm Wrestling. Mostly events here in Wisconsin. I did okay.”
            “So THAT’S why they call you ‘Maria The Muscle,’ or just ‘Muscle.’ I would, in turn, stink at that.” There was her smile coming right at me and only me, so I upped my boldness.
            “I also read that, years back, you went through a divorce. I’ve had two of those. One, twentyish years ago; the second one, six. The first one was from a man; the second, a woman.”
            The look Sheila gave in response was unflustered and showed calm, clear interest. I plowed ahead, spilling my pile of feelings for her and how they’d grown in such a lovely way. And there it was, the beginning of ‘us.’
            Two years later now, I would (happily but cautiously) say we’re doing quite nicely, thank you. My early ‘excited crush’ period gave way to something much more substantial and satisfying, but an abiding vein of “gaga for Sheila” does still run through me.
            We two, I boldly proclaim, are mature, experienced, clear-eyed grownups. We avoid taking a single day together for granted. Our lives, the separate and the joined, continue to evolve. So far so lovely. Knock wood, cross fingers, and keep learning.
            As to Sheila’s boxes, the number of them is not close to, say, Imelda Marcos’ shoe count, but she does have a bunch. Summer ones with cardboard shorts, winter ones with thermal linings, ones with hoods, visors, vents – a cavalcade of cleverness, those boxes. They take up one guest room and a quarter of the attic, and Sheila assures me her needed supply has been reached or is very close. She knows I mean it when I say I’d be cool with more. To a point.
            Over at PCA, Sheila has gained a VP spot but still spends Mondays and Fridays on the line. To the grunts it’s like she’s always worn boxes. A natural thing and a non-issue, even with Benny. He does sometimes comment on a box, but only to commend a new feature. Meanwhile, local Burlingtonians of all stripes are mostly showing her, and us, kindness and grace. The odd barbed look or comment might come, but it dissolves into thin air before reaching us in any real way. If one someday comes that doesn’t, we’ll deal.
            I have yet to ask Sheila why she switched from conventional clothing to boxes, and I’m sure I never will. She might not even know, at least not the whole of it. If she does, and one day decides to tell me, I will listen. Meanwhile, life is good with us, and I can only wish the same for all. So, here’s to boxes. At least the ones we happily put ourselves in. Cheers.

Mike Dwyer is a retired teacher, a long-ago journalist, and a relatively new writer of short fiction. His work has appeared in The Thieving Magpie, Fowl Feathered Review, and Redwood Writers “Transitions” Anthology.