Tree Of Strife

(When I was 10, lightning struck a tree in our backyard, killing it. Two years later, my grandfather randomly decides to come over and cut it down. My dad teaches at the junior high I attended, and we arrive home at the same time, converging on the driveway.)

Me: “What’s that noise?”

Dad: “Sounds like a chain saw.”

(We look at my grandfather’s truck in the driveway and run through the gate to our back yard. My grandfather is, in fact, dangling from the top of the dead tree with one arm and holding a running chainsaw with the opposite hand.)

Dad: “Dad! What the h*** are you doing?!”

Grandfather: “Shut up, boy, and get me a ladder!”

(There was no way he was getting down without one, since he’d cut off all the branches on the way UP!)