Sometimes Life Just Sucks...Other Times It Doesn't

What is it about crashes? Why is that ones that will ultimately be expensive sound one way while those that involve a $3 cheap trinket from China sound another. It is like the cheap ones have no oomph whereas the valuable/expensive ones shatter with a delayed sense of time so you can hear each atom splitting apart from one another in slow motion; like a chemistry experiment gone horribly wrong.

Crashes also for some odd reason sound different from one another based on whether the crash was intentional or not. For instance, when I was just a wee child of about age two my mother was having a fancy dinner party and borrowed china from all her friends and relatives. Being the helpful little lady I was I decided to vacuum for my mother. Now I am sure that when my mother heard the vacuum going she looked at my father quizzically and then they both made a dash for the dining room. But it was too late. For as they raced down the stairs I somehow managed to wrap the hose around the dining room table and pull the entire thing over. Crash. I suspect that it wasn't one big crash but the tinkle of each dish bouncing off one another as they cracked and chipped and went their own separate ways. That's the way of the "I shouldn't have borrowed so much" crash. It not only splinters your dishes but it also splinters your mind into a thousand little pieces trying to figure out how you are going to tell all those wonderful folks who lent you all that beautiful dish ware that their prize pieces are now sitting in the trash can along with the onion dip and the sweet gerkins.

Unfortunately, the crash I heard last weekend was a deliberate one. It was a crash created in moment of anger like a scorching red branding iron that is doused in water; so steaming and hot; it hissed louder than 100 angry hornets. A crash that was the result of two weeks without pharmaceuticals in the bloodstream and two minutes after a child was sentenced to some time alone. NO greater injustice could have been handed down upon a seven year old. And after a minute in which the blood was boiling so rapidly that the temperature of the brain went so high that it no longer functioned as it was designed to, a pool ball was shot through the window, shattering it into a million pieces right along with my soul. It was loud, angry and each shard of glass was jagged, twisted and capable of inflicting severe injury and pain. Glass that hid out of sight, like a private eye with his hand on the shutter, just waiting to open and expose the skin of a stranger to the anguished other. A crash so unexpected that one is now left to wonder if it is just the beginning or truly an anomaly but either way nothing will be quite the same again.

Then there was the crash of this past weekend. I was not there to witness it nor hear it but I am told that it was the sound a bowling ball makes when it captures a perfect STRIKE. A thud so deep that it resonates throughout the alley. In this case it was one of our old oak trees that guard the driveway to the cabin between the rocks that will catch a tire and the propane tank that lights our fire. Seems that for whatever reason this old oak split itself down the middle; the left half falling into the road while the right half fell into another old oak who strains to cradle it within its own feeble branches without falling over itself as it carries double its usual load. And should the oak lose its fight both will most likely crash into the cabin splintering everything from the roof to the foundation and carrying with it the dreams of past and current caretakers all in one fell swoop. Crash, Bang. It's gone never to be revived again unless, of course, you carry a good low deductable on your insurance policy .

I have heard the question asked that if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it in fact make a sound? After this weekend I finally have the answer to this perplexing question and quite frankly; it all depends on if you have good insurance with some sort of policy that covers dangerous trees. Seems that my insurance will not pay to have the two trees that MAY crash on my cabin removed. They will, however, pay to rebuild the cabin should the trees decide to fall upon it. CRASH...and I wonder why my premiums are going up!