De’ja McGee likely will wake up this morning with a few aches and pains after spending the night sleeping on a cardboard box in a parking lot.

But she also will wake up with a better understanding of what homeless people go through on a daily basis.

De’ja was one of about 20 youngsters with the Ninth Street Baptist Church Youth Ministry who camped out in the northwest corner of the Wal-Mart parking lot in an effort to simulate what it’s like to live without shelter and with meager resources.

Garry Marshall, youth pastor for the church, allowed the kids to have only $1.50 and few other conveniences to show them how the homeless struggle from one day to the next.

“I was looking for some slight inconveniences but enough to make them appreciate that they don’t have to look for food, they don’t have to look for a place to stay,” Marshall said.

They lucked out with the weather, as it was a comfortable 77 degrees early Friday evening, but Marshall said he was interested to see how they would fare when the sun went down and the temperature dropped.

“It’s going to get cold at night,” said De’ja, an 11-year-old Broken Arrow School student.

Although the kids were permitted to bring only $1.50 – and no iPods, cell phones or video games – that didn’t stop Torrey Brown from trying to scrounge up more change by playing his trumpet for passing cars in the parking lot.

“I thought since I was a kid playing an instrument, they’d drop the money right in,” Torrey said. “But it’s harder than I thought.”

One man passed and dropped off 80 cents for the youngster, marking his first score after several dozen cars passed.

The experience, Torrey said, proved to him how it can be tough asking for money.

“I never knew it was that hard to get money playing an instrument,” Torrey said. “But it’s a lot harder than I thought, so I definitely have respect (for the homeless).”

Marshall said any money given to the youngsters would be donated to the homeless. But for the rest of the night, he said, it would be whiling away the time and getting a sense of what life is like for someone without a home or a place to stay.

“We will make our entertainment, we will make our night and go from there,” he said.

Which was good enough for Lamont Crockett, a South Junior High School student, who said learning about the homeless would be worth the inconvenience of one night spent on pavement.

“We’ve got covers and stuff,” he said. “It might be a little uncomfortable, but it will be worth it.”