If A Tree Falls in the Forest and A Nerd Hears It . . .

The sun was out the other day and seeing as how I hadn’t left the apartment in a couple weeks, I decided to go take a walk in the park. This decision was in no way affected by the case of chili I’d purchased at Costco roughly a couple of weeks before or that I’d been eating it non-stop since then in a closed environment.

At any rate, I was shuffling merrily along when I heard a strangely familiar crack. As I looked around, I noticed one of the trees ahead of me was swaying in an odd fashion and then I heard several more cracks. 

 There was one more really loud CRACK and then the top half of the tree promptly fell off, crashing into the undergrowth with a resounding ‘thud.’

Strangely enough, the sound trees make when falling over is exactly the same sound as you hear on TV and in the movies. I had always kind of assumed that the sound guys had enhanced the noise in some way, but no, it sounds exactly the same.

Not earth shattering I know, but it was kind of weird that I knew exactly what was going on before I even saw it. Television, it seemed, had prepared me well.

I immediately ran over to where the tree fell expecting to find a fairy princess or a pair of ruby slippers or even a sword sticking out of the trunk, but there was nothing. I double, and then triple checked. Still nothing.

NOTE: I was, in all honesty, rather relieved there weren’t a pair of ruby slippers. Because honestly, I don’t have the calves for them.

I did find a worm near the scene, but I’m pretty sure it was just a regular worm-worm, as opposed to a magical, wish-granting fairy-worm. I know this because I interrogated it for about ten minutes and it never said or did anything save wriggle around. Some people walking by did turn around and go the other way, but then again, a large, hairy man was shouting ‘Where are my wishes, dammit!’ at a worm.

The large, hairy man was me, btb.

So, basically, all the literature I’ve ever read lied to me. Was an adventure too much to ask? A quest of some sort? Maybe a quick jaunt to a parallel world populated entirely by hot women who had been waiting for the arrival of a large, hairy man who was prophesied to judge their naked hopscotch competitions?

Seriously. Even an elf who needed a quick ride to the 7-11 would have been something. A dwarf with a fiddle. A talking plant. A mouse in a fedora.  Even a pair of comically oversized glasses.

But no, just a tree trunk and a big piece of fallen tree.

And to top it off, as I was dragging the fallen tree back to my truck (for my ‘pieces of wood I’ve found’ collection), a weird bum in an oddly pointed hat kept following me shouting something about fulfilling my ‘just a tree.’

Or it could have been ‘dust the bee.’ Or ‘desk on knee.’ Or even ‘destiny.’

But I doubt it.

Cheers,

-Jason