Wanted: Customer-service employee to process papers at government office. Must have a countenance that suggests intestinal blockage. Minimum four years' experience heavy sighing. Must not be able to communicate in any language other than office argot, and expect same in others.

At least, that's how I would have written the ad.

Encounters like these—not even so much as a "Hi," as I entered the office—are what make the rare encounter with a cheerful government employee so precious. Every great once in a while I meet one of those, and they make my day. Maybe it's the clown working the driver license camera who says something silly just to make you smile. Might even just be the short, male Hispanic supervisor who makes a Marx Brothers run through the facility and gets everyone laughing. (You've seen one of those, right? I think every medium-sized workplace has one.)

And so, realizing this would not be one of those, but a control group experience, I resigned myself to several minutes of dreary silence while my paperwork was scrutinized for any disqualifying error. Or maybe I could have turned in a 9th-grade English essay and still gotten what I came for.

No, that's wrong. They do care about what they're doing. To the exclusion of all else, including the pleasure of a nice conversation to pass the time at work. Lord knows, I tried. Nothing doing.

i still enjoyed monday because i had nearly killed myself on Sunday. Nothing like the weekend for a death-defying stunt.

I had hung a children's swing from the giant elm tree a few weeks ago, but it never quite sat right. A knot in one of the ropes I'd looped over a branch maybe 20 feet up had failed to cinch, causing the swing to yaw and walking one rope toward the other.

Determined to get it right, I borrowed Captain Garage's mountaineering equipment (the man has one of everything) and set about dragging myself up a branch about 2/3 my own diameter. I had not been up a tree since childhood, near as I can remember.

Trees are significantly harder to climb as a full-grown person. No matter how strong one might be, the sheer bulk of an adult is exceedingly difficult to balance and motivate along a rough, cylindrical surface. Add to that the realization of what might happen to one's spinal column, family, and status in the neighborhood ("He fell out of a what?") in the event of a plunge, and any thoughts of swinging limb-to-limb curdle as one hugs the bark like one of those pincher-grip dolls.

There's a reason all the Olympic gymnasts are teenagers.

The climbing harness I borrowed was only for safety. In case I slipped, I was counting on the rope, draped over a limb, to give my wife below just enough resistance to let me down slowly. The actual climbing would have to be done exclusively by me, and I haven't seen the inside of a gym in months.

Fortunately the elm's big branches grow in parallel along the route I planned to take, and I was able to sort of walk on one while leaning on the other. Heavy on the "sort of"; they were almost the same height. But I managed to get up there fairly quickly and to wedge myself in place while cinching up the swing's errant rope.

A few minutes later I began to climb down and found the going considerably more difficult. Backward is harder than forward, especially when you can't see behind you and you're hugging wood as if your life depended on it. Which, incidentally, it did.

I made it back down with a few nasty scratches, mostly from clinging and sliding on the bark. Whereupon I triumphantly yanked on my end of the safety rope ...

... and the knot fell apart.

Squeeky glared. Rittenhouse shrugged. It's not like I actually needed it up there, right?

See you tomorrow. I hope.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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