Our Tree

The tree wasn’t really ours. But, it was because we possessed it. Even though the owner of the house was the one who really owned it, we might as well have been the true owner. Our tree was the center of life around our cul de sac, and surprisingly no one ever fell out of it. It was like the giving tree, except that sometimes we gave back-the mat that my sister wove out of leaves from a fern, the stick structures we built that were supposed to be platforms but no one ever stepped on. We knew that they couldn’t be trusted. It was low and had wide branches so that we could climb on them even when we were seven, and tall enough that if you climbed to the top and moved apart the leaves you could see the whole street in all its glory. Being in our tree felt like being on top of the world. It was the host for our games of hide and seek and the background to which many adventures were had, and everyone would meet at the tree after our homework was done. Sometimes I walk by the tree and think, “I wish I spent more time here when I was younger”.

Andrew’s Dilemma

People said that there was no one in the human race who was the epitome of equal, the paragon of people-pleaser, or the absolute average. But there was. Andrew was always in the middle. He knew that extremes always led to people’s downfall, from the decay of Rome to his classmates who took the hardest classes and paid the dues of rigor in sleep. He never wanted to be sad and he knew that expectations led to sadness, so he kept the bar low. He wanted to have many friends and knew that if he was too invested in one thing he would alienate himself, so he became a spy, a fake, a social impostor who acted however everyone else wanted. As he saw it, the only way to be successful was to be in the middle.

He walked into first period the next day. He didn’t take a zero period because he wanted to sleep and always woke up at 7:30. His first period was chemistry in the community, a class that elevated him a little bit above the other sophomores taking biology but not as far as normal chemistry would. As he sat down in his seat next to the people he sat to every other day, the ones who he could talk to but never really identify with, he sighed as he thought about trudging through the day of school ahead of him. 

He could make jokes with his classmates about the one kid in class who was a little different, he could complain about the last test or a homework assignment, and if he ever found out that he was good at something in his class he could forget about it to fit in. And so he did his work in class absentmindedly, making comments without substance, and dreamed of where his mediocrity would get him in the future. As class was ending he lined up with all his classmates and looked around, trying to find someone to talk with. But his soccer friends were all talking about the varsity game he wasn’t going to, his chemistry friends were talking about a topic that he didn’t really understand because he never paid attention, and his most social friends were on their phones talking about social media that his parents wouldn’t let him get.

And he realized that being just in the middle meant he was all

Alone.