Y’all remember the kite eating tree from the Charlie Brown comics, right? Well, I now understand his trepidation in retrieving his kite from the tree. Let me tell you a story…

As a child - like 10 years old and onward until I was about 16/17 - I lived on 6.6 acres with my family. I simply LOVED that place; the old house with the adventurous attic and the creepy serial killer basement; the stable and steady yard around the house and the magical wilderness just beyond; it was my favorite place to be. What I loved most about it was the house’s porch. The porch dad to have been 10 feet off of the ground. It was built of brick and stone with stone slab to cap the walls of the porch about waist high on a decently tall adult. Many adventures were had on that porch fighting Klingons, assaulting the Death Star or saving people by taking huge leaps off of the edge, plummeting to the ground and running in any given direction with “wwhawawhawaha” playing in my head (that’s the sound of bionic arms and legs, doncha know). Hell, we even figured out how to get onto the roof from the side of the porch to “rescue” the poor little chipmunk that had “gotten stuck” in the eaves of the roof. At least that was the story I gave my dad when he came home and demanded to know why my younger brother was shimmying up the column and was halfway onto the porch roof. I had to say SOMETHING! There was a clear view from the road to the porch and Dad had to have seen me hoist my brother up as he was driving home. In truth, we both wanted to jump from the roof of the house, land on the porch roof and “fall” onto an old mattress my parents were getting rid of. I was too short to get a good hold to pull myself up, so my brother was going to pull me up until I could.

Dad bought the chipmunk story. However, we were no longer allowed to climb on the house. There were SIX perfectly good full-sized apple trees in the side yard - go climb those. Years later, during a visit with the same brother, he let slip what we were actually doing, knowing that we were full grown adults and Dad couldn’t do anything about it. Joke was on us. Dad knew EXACTLY what we were doing - he saw the mattress and did the math (I didn’t maths well as a child, either). He also knew the mattress had broken springs that would have impaled on of us if we landed on it. I didn’t see the problem. My brother only agreed to haul me up if I let him go first.

Anyhoo, we took to climbing every tree on the property. For the bigger ones I need boosted up since we weren’t allowed to use Dad’s ladder; but for the more “branchy” trees (like the mulberry tree we had) I was able to get into without help. Once I got into a tree, I was a climbing fool. Never did I get stuck, never did I fall out of the tree - I jumped. Highest point I jumped was about 15 feet from the ground. That was Dad’s guestimation right before he banned me from climbing and jumping from trees (which is why I took to jumping off of swings like a ballistic missle). I didn’t see the issue he had with it. I never hurt myself AND, as my mom had said when I complained to her about it, it was my dad’s own fault I liked jumping off of things. He encouraged us kids to jump off of things because the damned floor was a pool of lava and if we got off of the couch we’d burn to death. We figured jumping furniture was the safest way to get to the bathroom. So, no more “Rocky the Squirrel” for me.

Fast forward to last Sunday. There is a mulberry tree in the yard. It’s a “wild” one, meaning it was there when the place was bought and nothing has ever been done with it. Some of the branches are dead. The tree never gets watered outside of what God gives it. The tree never gets fertilized outside of what God gives it. The tree never gets pruned outside of when God does it. The tree is located to the main road in and out of town, so it gets pelted with all the pollution from the trucks, cars and semis that go by, yet it still grows and bears fruit. It still hosts birds and squirrels as if it were a McDonald’s.

And it’s climbable for a shorty like me.

It is also fruiting and I decided I was going to go pick the fruit to make mulberry whatever. I get my bowl and start plucking the lower hanging fruit. Birds screeching and squirrels chittering in angry protest with the tree’s siren song becoming a chorus. I ignored all three. There was plenty of fruit for all of us and I am 47 years old. I do NOT belong in a tree like a 10 year old. “But you COULD do it. You know you could. Besides, up there is where all the ripe berries are.”

I don’t know who said that, but they made a good point. The top branches were littered with spots of purply black berries. Along with a couple of stubborn robins telling me my kind wasn’t welcomed at their tree. Being one to fight discrimination, I went to the shed and got some rope. Walking back to the tree, I heard the robins fly away with a couple of birds screeching at me while I tied my bowl around my waist and looped it over my neck. I’m gonna get me some berries.

Famous last words, I’m sure.

Getting into the tree wasn’t a problem, and it felt GOOD knowing I could still pull myself up without help. Finding hand and foot holds, making sure the branch could take my weight, either breaking dead branches off or dodging them altogether; it all came back to me. I felt like I was a kid again, picking berries and climbing higher. I could only climb about six or eight feet from the ground. Meh, the tree wasn’t very big.

I paused to shift my bowl - which was a rooyal pain in the ass trying to keep myself upright while not spilling the fruits of my labor - and leaned against a limb. The birds were still being prejudicial assholes - flying in close to get something to eat, seeing me and flying back to where they came from as if to say, “Nope. Not eating here. They serve HUMANS.” I ignored them. I was in a tree. At 47 years old. With clicky shoulders and walnuts for knees. In that moment I was at peace. Everything was right in the world.

Until Buddy barked at me to get myself down from there. He was not happy that I was up high without him, I guess.

And that’s when the wheels came off of the wagon.

I didn’t fall. I’m much more careful than that. The way you go up is the way you come back down. Usually. Well, the way I went up, I didn’t have a bowl full of berries to worry about. I wasn’t about to lose any, so I took a different route down. A little riskier, but if I fell, I didn’t have far to fall. Unfortunately the route I chose had a lot of little dead branch spikes and every time I shifted down, my shirt snagged, or my jeans snagged, or my shoe laces snagged. I was getting impatient with the amount of snagging that was going on, so I grabbed a branch with one hand to turn my body while using the other to keep the bowl steady. I shifted. My thigh, who was firmly wedged in a crook decided to cramp. Or complain about the 180 degree turn to the muscle. Whichegver the case, I shifted back in a hurry using both hands. And promplty spilled some of my precious cargo.

Sonofabitch. Oh well, didn’t lose too many. I started clearing the dead spikes so not to get caught up again and continued my descent. HA! Only in an ideal world - of which I most decidely do NOT live in - because I cleared the dead branches, I shifted to relieve the cramp and give my poor thigh some relief not worrying about my ass placement - which is critical if you have wider hips and are climbing in narrow spaces.

I’m going to pause here and tell you, I have no ass. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight in the last three years and although I still have the “Weston Spread” (my mother’s family’s name for the wide butts on the women of the family), I no longer have “da booty.” My ass is flatter than Kansas. My ass is so flat, you could wax my back and butt and go surfing on me. That’s how flat my ass is.

So how in the hell did it get stuck?!?

Because I h ad my phone in one pocket, my cigarettes in the other. Why I had my smokes in my pocket, I don’t know. It’s not like I was gonna climb to the top and have a cigarette because it was so stressful. But my phone - I keep that with me always becasue it gives me peace of mind for when I have an emergency, I can call for help instead of dying from whatever idiocy I do. Apparently, those two things gave me “ass” enough to get stuck in a tree. I am not happy. Mainly because the tree is on the corner of a well traveled road and that was all I needed; some one see me stuck in the tree, tell my boyfriend and him rolling up with a cherry picker to get me out - all the while, the sleepy town suddenly becomes alive and stands around to watch my dumb ass get rescued from a tree and the story lasts for YEARS. It’s a tiny town. It’s what happens.

I looked down wondering how far my descent was. Y’all I was LITERALLY 4 feet from the ground! I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be a spectacle because of four frigging feet. I tried jumping down. I felt a tug on my ankle. My foot was stuck.

Are you frigging KIDDING me?

I hear a truck. A diesel - that’s a no brainer. It’s farm country - EVERYONE has a diesel. But all I thought in my head was that truck was my boyfriend coming down the road and I will NEVER hear the end of it if he has to help me out of a tree. I grabbed a branck with my left hand and pulled my weight off of my foot. look at me go - I can pull 120 pounds with one hand - and jerked my foot free. Unfortunately there was no stable place to put it. By now, I didn’t give a shit about my bowl of berries. I had to get out of the damned tree. Releasing the precious cargo, I grabbed another branch and shifted (see, this is why monkey bars are important to have on the playground), freeing my ass and my foot in one go. All I did was flip myself 180 (technically photo-shopping myeslf in real life) and came face to face with an incoming bird. We both said, “Oh shit!” and the bird - a robin, I think; I didn’t get a good look - veered off course, brushed a bunch of berries in aborting it’s flight path and I pushed myself back to avoid a face to face collision.

And stabbed myself in the back with a dead branch. While massaging my wound, the asshat bird had the gall to sqwak at me - I’m pretty sure he said something bad about my mother - and refused to leave me alone so I could get out of the tree. So, not only did I have to worry about not getting stuck and finding a secent descent route, I now had to worry about a stupid, over-inflated, bigoted avian telling me how awful my species is.

At least the truck that was coming wasn’t my boyfriend, thank God. I was leaning against a branch, yelling back at the robin - which only brought more of his bigoted friends - and tried to figure out a way to get down without losing every single mulberry I picked. Jumping wasn’t going to work - I’d probably land on Buddy because he was directly below me wondering what the hell was going on up there and why didn’t I bring him along. After a few minutes, I finally said fuck it and propped my berries on a branch I could reach from the growon, grabbed another branch and pulled my body up and positioned my legs out.

I was gonna drop. Dropping is different from jumping in the fact its more controlled. I wasn’t worried about hitting dead branches - those were cleared when I decided to drop. I was concerned about landing on my dumb dog, who upon seeing it rain sticks as if they were manna from heaven, decided to park his ass below me to gnaw on one. I swung me feet back onto the crook. The birds perched on the tippy top of the canopy got louder. And that’s when my mind decided to replay the movie in my memory bank. That’s all I fucking needed - a bunch of birds scratching and clawing my eyes out while I’m in a tree.

I turn around. Behind me the space is narrower, but if I turn myself sideways, I could drop. It was more difficult, but since the ideal drop zone wasn’t available and the bigoted birds were coming back in force to lynch me, I was out of options. I put my “butt cheeks” in the bowl with the berries so I wouldn’t get stuck again and grabbed hold of the branch. I slowly made my way over and a robin landed above me to the right just as my feet left their secure footing. I glared at the robin and said, “You shit on me, and I will torch this fucking tree. Do not test me.”

The robin flew away. I did not get shat upon.

Once I was cleared of any further obstructions, I dropped the 4 feet. Buddy looked up from his stick for a nano second, then went back to gnawing on his sticks. His concern for my welfare was palpable…

So, if you ever wondered why Charlie Brown was so terrified to get his kite back from the kite eating tree, now you know why. Its DANGEROUS inside a tree!