I need to change out of my work clothes, which cuts into my time. I decide that my Saucony sneakers, which I bought at DSW off the clearance rack, have done their time on my feet already today, so I change into a pair of factory-outlet New Balance sneakers with decent grip in case I go off road.
A quick text to my daughter holds me up a little longer. Sure would be nice to have company, but she is still at work. This changes my possible route. On my way home today I drove down a street that I walk all the time but never bothered to clock the mileage until now. From my house to the top of the hill, it's about 6/10ths of a mile. It's uphill the whole way out, and it's downhill the whole way back: Perfect for a warm-up walk followed by a jog back home with the possibility of going off road toward the end.
I finally get out of the house, later than I hope and start chugging my way on the first incline. I hate that my top half wants to go faster than my bottom half. It's the curse of being out of shape coupled with blown out Achilles tendons that will never, ever recover and a bad case of Morton's neuroma in my right foot. I cross the street from the church to the elementary school and start up the long, final incline, the one that makes up the bulk of the route.
This is where I start debating: Do I keep walking at a decent clip or should I jog a little, maybe to the street sign a few hundred yards away?
"Jog!" my brain screams.
"Walk!" my legs retort.
I really should jog; my pants are tight and not because of the dryer. It takes me one second to hesitate. I swear, it's only one second, but it feels like an eternity.
I'm on the sidewalk because, unlike pedestrians with death wishes, I do not walk nor jog in the street (too often). The sidewalk is wedged between a strip of tree-lined grass and sturdy stone walls that protect the old mansions from common folk like me.
Suddenly, the tree not ten feet in front of me keels over. Honestly, it doesn't creak, it doesn't scream, it doesn't snap. It simply topples like a drunk on his way to the floor after blacking out. It's not a small tree, either. This tree is ... was ... forty-plus feet tall. As it falls in front of me and to the left, it blocks my path, takes out a chunk of the stone wall, and completely annihilates the only driveway in and out of the elementary school.
What amazes me is that I have a front row seat to the falling. What flabbergasts me is that even on this semi-busy street, I am the only witness. What shocks me is the realization that had I started jogging a second or two ago, I'd be dead right now.
I call the police, who, at first anyway, seem completely disinterested. They insist that this is a private property issue. I tell them a street is blocked. "It's a private street," the dispatcher tells me. "Not our concern." Well, then. I guess I'll just be on my way and hope the school has a bazillion chainsaws handy. I walk fast up the rest of the hill, circle a brick building on the prep school campus, and jog my way back down, a slow jog because my damn Achilles tendons hurt already as I hit the mile marker.
As I near the bottom of the big hill, I see a police car pulling a u-turn in the street. It looks like they showed up after all. Maybe the school principal called them and maybe he or she is someone far more important than I, a lowly out-of-district teacher and sometime jogger.
As I get closer, I cross the street and introduce myself to the officer as the person who made the initial call. "If I started jogging a second sooner," I joke, "you'd be scraping my brains off the pavement."
We get to talking, and the cop wants to know what exactly happened. "Did the wind knock it over? Did it snap? Did you hear it cracking as it came down?" No, no, and no. The tree didn't do any of those things. I wrack my brain trying to think of a way to describe what I witnessed.
"It's like ... it sort of ... " I gather my thoughts for a quick sec. "It's like the tree fainted. One second it was standing, and the next it wasn't. It didn't make a sound."
We chat for a bit. The fact that I was seconds from biting The Big One isn't the part that has my brain befuddled. The tree fell exactly where all the elementary school children and their parents stand for drop-off in the morning and pick-up in the afternoon. It is a mere ninety minutes after the end of the school day for them. Even though some kids are still on the playground with after-school activities, had that tree fallen at the height of parent pick-up, children and adults could be ... WOULD BE ... dead.
Do I feel lucky? Yes. I thank the angel on my shoulder (those close to me know exactly who that is, and the poor guy has been working overtime on all of us lately). Actually, right after it happened, I thanked him out loud while standing right there on the sidewalk before I even grabbed my phone to contact the police or to take pictures. But, had I been hit, either mortally or brutally, it still is a better scenario than school children being taken out.
I realize that today I almost get sent to the forest's version of the Davy Jones Locker. There's only one logical thing to do next: Get my ass back inside the house and try not to get killed for the rest of the day.
