Apricots

I love apricots, and this summer I am lucky enough to live in a house that has an apricot tree. The unfortunate bit is that the tree is next to the sidewalk, and people in my city have no qualms about picking the fruit from the tree, even if I or one of my roommates are sitting outside in plain view.

Rather than actually say anything to these rude pedestrians who refuse to ask for permission, I simply try to pick all the good fruit before anybody else can. Which led to my climbing the tree the other morning and standing on a branch that may not have been completely stable. I have been climbing trees since I was a kid, so I was not terribly concerned with where I was standing, but I had the feeling it was not the most stable of branches.

It wasn't.

As I was reaching for an apricot, I heard the branch crack underneath me. Again, being a life-long tree climber, I was of course holding onto a stable branch with my free hand, so as the branch collapsed, I was left swinging in the tree with nothing underneath. At this point, I swung up to a higher branch and managed to salvage my bag of apricots. The only injury was a small cut in my hand from the branch I was holding onto. But the tree branch is currently lying on the ground with no hopes of rejoining its fellow branches.

Moral of this story, if you ever want to feel big, have a tree branch break underneath you. And if you want to feel like Tarzan, make sure you are hanging onto a stronger branch when that happens so at the end of the day you can say, "I swung through a tree today."