Arboring Resentment

For some reason, I was thinking about Arbor Day today. I looked at a calendar to see when, exactly, Arbor Day would happen, and - Lo! - it seems to be a thing of the past. We do Earth Day these days, apparently. Either that, or I've got a shitty, tree-hating calendar. Or both.

We used to get small pine trees in school on Arbor Day. They were little seedlings with their roots and some dirt carefully wrapped in a plastic bag. Here in Scrantonland, each tree had a little tag attached to it that told us it was a gift from the Globe Store. (Now, before you think that we were especially environmentally aware in these parts ... well, no. The Globe Store simply happened to be the name of the local Wanamaker department store, nothing more.)

Those tags were touching little epistles, especially designed to tug at the heartstrings of sappy kids like me. I can't remember exactly what they said but it was something like this:

"I am your Arbor Day tree, a gift from The Globe Store. Please take care of me and plant me in a sunny place. If you remember to give me plenty of water so I can grow, I'll put carbon dioxide into the air and give you shade on a sunny day."

The helplessness touched me deeply . These poor little wisps of trees were depending on us! Looking to be nurtured and loved! Just asking for a sunny spot and some water! I'd read my tree's tag on the bus ride home, and my mind would hear it in a childlike voice - a voice, in fact, that sounded an awful lot like Rudolph from those Rankin-Bass Christmas specials. I'd know in my fifth-grade heart that my tree was lucky to have found me. Carefully shielding it from the jostling middle school crowds, I'd cradle it in the palms of my hands. I may even have talked to it. At any rate, I took my tree obligation seriously. My tree needed me and, dammit, I wasn't about to disappoint.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the other kids on the bus. Especially the boys. They'd grab the sprig of tree and swat at each other with the Baggie-encased root ball. Several especially unfortunate trees sailed out of the windows of the moving bus. I was mortified, and I felt the sting of tears in my eyes. Those poor trees! They never had a chance!

Every year I'd plant my tree in the back yard. And every year my father, Philistine that he was, mowed it down as he cut the grass. He didn't mean to wantonly pillage the environment, he simply didn't see the small stick with its four pine needles sticking out of the ground. He apologized each time, but it was no use. None of my trees ever survived.

I've never forgotten the trees that became whips, or the ones that were flung out the window. But it occurred to me now (just today, in fact) that the tossed trees, the ones I felt so sad about, probably live to this day, happily populating the rural area into which they were tossed. Mine just mulched the backyard. Oh well.