The Hanging Tree

I finally reached adulthood on my eighth birthday. The years leading up to that momentous occasion were difficult and trying times but I had finally made it. In honor of that auspicious event, I climbed a mesquite tree in our front yard and tied a rope to one of the branches. After fashioning a reasonable facsimile of a hangman’s noose, I placed the rope around my neck and hanged myself. I dangled there in the tree by the driveway contemplating the mounting pressure in my head. It felt as if my eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. Then, the rope slipped several inches. My feet were still a few feet off the ground and the tree limb that had been within easy grabbing distance was now effectively out of reach.

As they say, first impressions are usually wrong. A perfect example would be the driver of a car that happened to be cruising down the street in front of our house on the day of my first successful hanging. He jumped to the mistaken conclusion that rescue services were in order. As he came upon the scene of a kid hanging by the neck, in a tree, with arms and legs flailing, he couldn’t have known that I had discovered the secret to hanging for short periods of time with no significant risk. While it is true that my insufficiently developed knot tying skills had put me in a pickle, other tree branches and the tree’s trunk were well within reach. By the time my Good Samaritan exited his vehicle, I was running like a scalded dog, terrified that all of this attention might result in the old man finding me out.

In case you are wondering, it’s all about how you place the rope around your neck. The knot should go in front rather than the side or the back. Circus performers use that technique. I don’t recommend it unless you are outlandishly stupid, in which case it might be the best thing for you.

Up to that point, hanging myself was not the most idiotic thing that I had ever done. In the years to come, it would barely register alongside other increasingly sophisticated shenanigans. I chalk it all up to a profoundly impaired sense of self-preservation as well as poor judgment, all of which fall under the heading of “dumb.” The scope of my dumbness must be broken down into categories and collated into sub-segregated piles in order to keep them straight. This little pile belongs in the “Tardfest” category. I’ll file it away later.

This story is all about behavioral abnormalities resulting in gratuitous risk taking. Along those lines, I am amazed at the number of people I’ve met over the years who can’t believe they are still alive. They plan, and I use that term loosely, their lives up to the mid thirties or early forties and then panic when it becomes apparent that perhaps they will not go down in a blaze of glory but will likely waste away with bedsores and pneumonia instead. Many of them reach middle age in a state of befuddlement. I have a theory about that but my New Years Resolution is to stop posting encyclopedic tomes, so it will have to wait until my next post.