When I heard a loud crash outside my house Wednesday night, I thought a tree had blown over onto my roof.
It’s been stormy here for the last few days, so I feared that the rain and wind had weakened a tree enough to bring it crashing down. I didn’t see any breaks in the roof from the inside, though, so I ran out my front door into the cold rain.
My next-door neighbor came out of his house 30 seconds later, asking me if I knew what it was. It took us a couple of minutes to realize the crash had come from my back yard. We found several sections of a huge branch that had collapsed from a tree.
The falling pieces had avoided my house, but damaged the back-yard fence. The main section was about 25 feet long and there were several smaller sections. I was lucky that it was just some chain-link fence that was damaged instead of my house.
The neighbor told me he could help me fix the fence after work Thursday — although I didn’t figure anything would come of that — and then we both ran back inside to get out of the rain.
Partisans defend every kind of evil when it’s done by their own allies
Being treated with respect changed black teen’s racial beliefs in 1974
Peshawar murders show need to support those who share our values
Economic Man needs no heart, because love and God are dead
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
Most prizes feel empty, because our real need is for connection
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world