Conversations with Tree

Tree interjected, “Your score was noticeably above the top cut-off score. The look on your face when you realized that was priceless.” Tree seemed to begin a low-grade laugh, somewhere between his odd belly laugh and a mere chuckle. “So again, what did it tell you?”
“It suggested, of course, that the survey was for amusement only, probably never tested for validity, not peer reviewed in scientific journals. Low scores by readers, of course, would discourage further reading. I and other readers had been set up for a false, or at least highly exaggerated, revelation. Having said that, all of those 4’s and 5’s left me unsettled.”

******************************

“Do you remember any of the situations used in the survey?” Tree asked. “Do you remember the one about being in a ticket line and someone cuts in front of you?”
“Yes.”
“And you responded with a 5?”
“Yes, only because I couldn’t respond with a 6. Everyone would put 5 on that one,” I insisted.
“Mike, you not only put a 5. You also know that you would be the most likely person in the line to say something to the line-breaker.”
“That is true, Tree, but that one is a particular pet peeve of mine,” I defended.
Tree continued, “Then there was the one – you are seated in a restaurant, 15 minutes pass, and you still don’t have service or a glass of water. And you did another 5, correct?”
“I’m sure you are correct. Fifteen minutes is a long time, Tree. Again, most people would say 4 or 5.”
“You don’t believe that some people are moderately angry 3’s or others were actually enjoying their conversation and are, at most, an annoyed 2?” Tree asked.
“Maybe,” I answered, “some people are ridiculously patient.”
Tree said, “And when you are around such people, Mike, you often feel angry, don’t you?”
“Well, yes.”

There was no time to run out of the barn door after unlatching it, as even a slow cow would have been well along in devouring me as I raised the latch. But there was a ladder ten feet to my side, which extended to a small loft. Somehow, I made it to the 7th or 8th rung of that ladder before the cow could react to my surprising speed and kill me in whatever manner that dairy cows typically kill small humans. There was little time for such analysis, but the cow did not attempt to climb the ladder. The standoff continued for an eternity of a few minutes until the startled grandfather rescued the wailing grandson from the murderous cow.”
“My view of cows has never been the same. It took years for the nightmare of the mean cow to dissipate. Anytime that I was particularly close to a cow – at a county fair, for example – my heart would race, I would sweat, my throat would constrict.”

*************

“No, this is a situation easily avoided in the normal course of my remaining life. There is no need to face it. My sincere belief is that confronting this fear will not make me a better person.”
Tree paused for what seemed to be a minute. “Mike, you need to find the opportunity for some time alone with a cow in a barn. This is not even your most fearsome fear.”

*************

“When you actually did these height-related challenges in the Army, did it not boost your confidence regarding height issues in the future?”
“Not one bit. The facing-your-fears stuff is much overdone. And, like cows in barns, avoidance throughout my remaining lifetime seems to be a good option. My mind and spirit are not dragged down by my fear of height when leading a life unlikely to require climbing, jumping, or floating.”

It remained in my nature, I suppose, to ask one question too many. It was worth a shot. “So, Tree is there any light that you could shed on where humans are headed … on what will happen to us?”

Tree answered, “Let’s see. We could talk about global warming and the great continental fires, or nuclear weapons, or the collapse of Pennsylvania and West Virginia into a great hole that sucked Ohio down with it and caused earth to wobble toward the sun, or the invasion by aliens dressed as cocker spaniels.”

“O.K., Tree. I got it. You are not telling me.”

“That is correct. Did you learn nothing from the football discussion? Don’t ponder the future. Keep your head in the day. That is the start of living smaller, Mike.

“Indeed, the responses by football to the uproar over the violence in football created another path of the sport’s decline. Changes in the rules of the game and limits on the amount and nature of contact practices, as examples, ignited vigorous debates over the Powder Puffing of the American game. Opponents of such changes in the game – as you played it, Mike – used substantially more vulgar words than Powder Puffing. Fans had different thresholds for when the powder puffing process crossed the line of powder puffication when football was no longer worth their fanship.”

******************************
“MAVIS?”
“Mothers Against Violence in Sports. And their aim was to take out tackle football first, before moving to other sports. They measured the drop in high school football players from one million downward as their benchmark of success. They were very successful in their endeavors, and football declined in importance from the bottom up.”

******************************

“The death of football also proceeded place versus place, and indeed it inflamed region against region. The northeastern and western coastal states ceased college football first, and their congressional representatives pushed for a national ban on the sport. The rest of the country generally disagreed, and southern states particularly supported the status quo in football…
…After a moment of reflection, I added, “You know, Tree, that in my own defense, you are a bigger-than-me entity who knows things that I don’t know. So, you really have an unfair advantage over me as a bullshitter. You could likely pull off something like this again. The problem is that I often need to know that what you are saying to me is not bullshit, or I could never take you seriously.”
“Yes, you make a good point. Now that I have moved past a humor hurdle, I will not do that to you again… probably.”

*******************************

“Mike, I told you that I made up that story about the death of football.” After an awkward pause, he added, “We are not talking about the future, Mike. It was a joke.”
“But then we are right back to where we started, Tree. You know what happens to football and I don’t.”
“Yes, that is correct. You only want to know good things about the future. The future doesn’t work that way, Mike. Trust me: you don’t want to know about the future of football or anything else.”
“OK, Tree,” I surrendered, “I don’t want to know.” I did want to know, however, and Tree knew that I wanted to know. Lessons about football are especially difficult to learn.

Tree and I had such conversations weekly, it seemed, as the NFL season and the first college games began. Tree was briefed on the basics of football development—youth leagues, junior high, high school, college, and pro. He was an enthusiastic student learning the rules, the strategy and tactics, and the terminology of the game. His questions and comments were wide-ranging.
It was the first NFL Sunday night game, I believe, when the females had gone to bed early, and I had relaxed on the porch at halftime. Tree had been watching the game when he asked the most surprising question, “Why do you keep a score in football? Couldn’t you play exactly the same game without keeping score?”
Only a few times in my life have I been speechless, without a ready answer. In fact, I prided myself on prompt and decisive answers even when the question was unclear or entirely beyond my store of knowledge. While not responding, I thought “Geez ,Tree, give me a break, do you really need me to answer that question?” But, of course, Tree heard that, and it felt to me that I had hurt his feelings.
“Because the whole point of playing the game is to win it.”
“Really?” said the Tree genuinely. “So the players will not know if they are enjoying the playing of this game until they know whether or not they have won the game? Isn’t it too late by then?”
“Well, no, not exactly…”
“Could not a team be declared the winner by some other means than a score?” Before I could reply, “And does the winner always play the game better than the loser?”
“No, bad luck and bad referees can lose the game for the more deserving team,” and I knew that this had been particularly true for the noble lads of The University of Tennessee football team in recent years. “But there has to be some sort of scoring to determine a winner.”
“Why don’t the fans at the game take a vote on who played the best overall and one team is declared a winner.”
“Because the home team would always be the winner.”
“Then,” reasoned Tree, “on average, every team would win half the time. Isn’t that what happens anyway?”

***************

“Has anyone ever hit the punt returner, anyway, really hard when he doesn’t expect it?”
“It is rare, but I’ve seen it happen. Either the tackler doesn’t see the fair catch signal, or he just chooses to possibly kill the punt returner, anyway,” I answered.
“Then how does the punt returner not think about that possibility when he makes the signal and is waiting to catch the next punt. How does he ever catch the punt knowing that could happen?
“I don’t know, Tree. Nerves of steel, I guess, because they almost always catch the ball.” Then, Tree surprised me.
“There would be a 15-yard penalty if the player actually hit the punt returner anyway, right?”
“Right, and they might throw the player out of the game. I’m not sure about that.”
“If they did that, though, on the very first punt and certainly if they did it on the first two punts, wouldn’t the punt returner, or his replacement, be very likely to fumble one or more times thereafter? Thirty yards in penalties, versus recovering the ball one or two times, is an attractive trade-off, especially if you have your two worst players do the deed.”
“No, you wouldn’t do that Tree. I don’t ever remember seeing something like that happen.”
“Because a team never commits a penalty except by accident.”
“No. I can’t say that, Tree. Often a player knows he is illegally holding, for example, but hopes a referee will not see him.”
“And the coaches know about this?”
“Yes, sort of, more or less.”
“Then the only special thing about hitting the punt returner is that it is so out in the open, so obvious?”
“That and the punt returner might be killed. Still, it might work, at least in the short run. If winning were really everything, then you would expect to see it more. Same for roughing the quarterback.

“…To begin with, the dog knows when it is ‘time’ for a bath, even though we don’t have a consistent day of the week. Somewhere deep down, the dog has to know that she is filthy and beginning to stink. So she is on guard for the very event that is designed to preserve her as a family pet. One cannot approach her either too happy or too sad. For example, to move toward her singing ‘it’s a beautiful day for a walk in the park’ would not, and did not, work. Like lightning, she was in the back of the cage. We don’t have a park, and Teddi Rose apparently knew that.”

*******************

“Let’s begin our experiment with Teddi Rose by communicating and controlling her to stand up and focus her attention upon us. You need not and cannot use voice commands, or other sounds or gestures. Neither can you think deceptions, threats, or promises of rewards at her. Keep your willful projection on the dog’s head until you have accomplished your objective. It is a relatively simple process but does require practice. Let me do it first, and then you try.”
There was a brief pause. I heard nothing from Tree and experienced no communication between Tree and Teddi. The dog, whose head was already raised, stood up and aimed her body and her line of sight directly at Tree’s head, even though she could not see Tree’s head from the back of the porch. She remained standing up, frozen.
“O.K., Mike, you try it.” Teddi Rose laid back down with her head on the floor and still aimed at Tree.
At this point, I was very enthusiastic about what we were doing and what Tree was attempting to teach me. It occurred to me, however, that I had very little experience in communicating with, marshalling, or focusing my inner forces toward anything.

*******************

The beating of the Telltale heart was nothing compared to this. I willed Teddi to turn toward me, and I focused intensely on the picture, the replaying vignette. All of me grew tense, clenched fists, rapid heartbeat, blood pressure up, red moving into my face. When I could no longer contain the force of my will, it loosed itself, and my laser eyes guided the forceful missile to target.
While I strained with the pulsating rhythm of force impulses catapulted forward, the dog did not flinch. She would not even turn toward me, much less walk to me and Sit Pretty. Frustrated, I attempted to once more increase my efforts. Another redoubling, I knew, would likely cause me to pass out, throw up, or worse. Wave after wave hit the pooch’s head…

*******************

She then raised her head, looked at me, and smirked. It at least looked like a smirk to me. Deflated, I stopped the effort.
Tree said, “You can’t do it, can you?”
“No. Not unless you can give me more tips, training, or magic…or I can revert to deceit, treats, or threats…this is apparently not going to happen. The dog is not walking over here for a Sit Pretty.”
“That is it then, now you have it,” advised Tree.

It felt as though this trouble was removed from my spirit, from the guts of me.

I thought to myself that is what comfort feels like. What more could it be? And I knew that this comfort would not have come if anyone else but Tree had spoken the same words. Because his words were, well, bigger.

“Ants are certainly better than humans at some things,” the tree added. “If an ant left home base in a desert and walked for a day, the ant could find its way home. You, on the other hand, would not have a chance to find your way home. You can barely navigate with maps and street signs. A nomad would find your bleached bones amongst the shifting sands. You were also once intrigued in learning that because of the high death rates among foraging ants, older ants are disproportionately assigned that job. They are close to death anyway—an interesting insight into ant decision-making and ethics. You remarked that this solved the problem of funding social security programs for older ants.”

*********************

Some group of astronomers somewhere had claimed there were more stars in the universe than there were grains of sand on all of the beaches of the earth. Wow! One had to wonder who actually counted all that sand, but the point for me was the unimaginable size of the scientific challenge.

Unlike our last, perfect dog Wilson, this particular cocker spaniel exhibited a host of psychological, behavioral, and perhaps spiritual maladies. She was a biter and hoarder. She literally bit the hand that fed her. Anything dropped on the floor was the property of Teddi Rose. It could be retrieved via bloodshed, or, we ultimately learned from a dog whisperer, by trading for a treat. Thus, knowing our own country does not trade for hostages, we rewarded the behavior that was unacceptable. Because this was a dog. And we were bleeding to death.
*************
“And what if she beats you to her cage?” asked Tree.
“It was one of my great feats of problem solving,” I said proudly. “We have a cushion, of course, on the floor of the cage that exactly covers the cage bottom and can be easily removed for washing. If I pull out the cushion in one continuous motion, she sits in front of me to be leashed. She hasn’t yet let the cushion slide beneath her, keeping her at the back of the cage. The look on her face is priceless after a cushion-pull happens, and before she collects her wits, I have her down in the sink.”
“Basically then, you use a combination of deceit and superior force,” said Tree. “Not to mention the generous allotment of treats that you give the dog for performing mundane acts,” he added.
“That would be an accurate summary of where we are with Teddi Rose, yes,” I admitted.
*************
Teddi Rose, who had been temporarily forgotten on the couch, jumped to the floor and slowly walked over to Tree’s voice in the corner. She sat down on her haunches with her back to me and seemed to look up through the corner of the ceiling at Tree’s head outside. It was entirely quiet. Then Teddi Rose did a Sit Pretty and held it awhile. She finished and turned to me with sadness in her large, brown eyes. Before this could choke me up, her look turned to determination. Dog determination. She walked the couple of steps to me and sat down on my feet. She had never before sat on my feet, but it felt good to have her there.

…”Are you assuming that I know the complete history of tree-to-human interactions, which implies that I know all of human history?”

“Yes, that would be the assumption. Are you that big to know all of human history?”

“Yes. Bigger.”

This was terrific news. I loved history. “This is sort of… off my track… but could I ask you questions about history?”

“Give me an example.”

“Ok.” What was the most monumental question that I could ask about human history? “Was Fidel Castro involved in any way in a plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy?”

“No.”

“No, he was not involved?”

“No, I heard your example, and we aren’t doing history.”

This was a rebuke if I ever heard one, but he did not say it unkindly and neither were his non-verbals unkind. Nevertheless, I had just foreclosed all enlightenment about history. A wonderful human representative I was turning out to be. My apparent history error was of breathtaking magnitude.

I found myself attempting to use the topics, and substance, of my thought life in facilitating the timely resumption of conversations. For example, I posed myself in meditation toward the backyard while in a reading pose viewed from indoors. A meditative thought posture might indicate to the tree, who was surely monitoring my thoughts, an openness, willingness to listen, and perhaps humility that could beget a discussion. No.

There was then a set of respectful thinking, with a slightly bowed head. It was not necessarily aimed at respect for the tree but I looked at the couch, and I respected it; the screen on the porch, and I respected it; a big bug on the screen, and I respected it. Anyone would recognize my gushing out of respect. Nada.

A brief try was made at self-criticism in my thought life, which might again signal humility and also invoke pity. It would synergize with any redemption strategy that could be part of this. At some point, I was mentally begging. The waiting was killing me, and the insanity doubts were creeping back.

Perhaps the tree would respond if asked more specific questions, such as: “Are you God?” Even then, I would need to be mindful of the context around such a whopper question. How does one build up to a question like that? If only it was as simple as the task of the scores of lie detector operators, who had been carefully studied via years of television…

Are you a tree?

Are you a persimmon tree?

Are you God?

A really strong gut feeling told me that there is no easy or good way to ask someone or something if they are God. How much experience does the typical human have over a lifetime in asking that question?

It also occurred to me that if a direct approach at Who again failed, questions might be asked regarding the powers and/or abilities which the tree did or did not have. If I could ascertain what he could or could not do, this would be valuable insight toward the Who. It was a second-best approach, but a reasonable Plan B.

Deliberately looking at the tree’s head, I thought to him, “Mr. Tree… I don’t exactly know how to address you. But if you are real and you have been listening to what I have been thinking, then you would understand why I need to ask you for a one-time favor to me, so that I will know this is real and not insanity.” Silence from the tree.
“I was just wondering if, perhaps, you could show me a miracle: you know, something that could not be explained in human terms, that could not be done by a human, even the best and the brightest of us.” Still there was silence from the tree, but I somehow felt he was listening and took license to talk further. “It’s not that I’m asking that you do something of benefit to me directly. If you could just wiggle your branches, or raise the couch a foot off the floor, or make the dog dance on her hind legs…” Silence.
Then, “Does it occur to you that one of your family inside the house or anyone walking by on the street might see this miracle… and that this might end any chance of future conversations?” “And have you considered,” said the tree, “that if conversations with a backyard tree are the cause of your insanity issue, then miracles that you perceive as performed by the very same tree are not likely to solve your problem?” Actually, I was thinking that very thought but, unfortunately, I had taken the tree’s participation in the conversation as an encouragement to keep talking, “Yes, but a miracle or two would make a difference for me, I think. You could do something there in the side yard, just for example, so that only I could see it. Those bushes bordering the yard before the treeline, maybe they could move, or dance, or sing, or something. Or, the groundhog and rabbits and deer who walk in that yard could make an appearance and do something… or clowns and a marching band… I don’t really know… anything you could do?” “No,” said the tree. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not showing you a miracle.” And that was the last time the tree and I talked about miracles for a while.

I knew that insanity did not run in my family. We had our share of problems and eccentricities, but no one had, to my knowledge, married either royalty or a cousin. No one was known to have had unusual relationships with trees.
On the other hand, I wasn’t particularly well read in psychology or psychiatry, to my credit, I thought. What if there is a known and well-researched type of insanity involving men who, later in life, meet the equivalent of the invisible friend from childhood. What if I am another case study, first blooming? It probably has a name already, so that it won’t be the “Brookshire syndrome.” (No big deal, but I would have liked some credit for it.)

Perhaps the talking tree was the tip of the iceberg for me, and my insanity was real and would now progress rapidly. What was the progression: a talking tree, a singing dog, a laughing airplane? (I glanced at the dog but she wasn’t singing. Good.) How far would it go? And if I were insane, then, by definition it seemed, none of these things would be extraordinary to me, beginning with the talking tree. They would only seem unusual to the people who took me away, locked me up, and talked to me in soft voices.