When Good Trees Go Bad

Tuesday afternoon I was attacked in the parking lot of the video store. In broad daylight. At 3:08 in the afternoon. My heart beats wildly just remembering it. 

I wasn't attacked for my purse or even my jiggly parts. My attacker didn't even want my freshly rented copy of the 1987 classic Wall Street. My attack was much more personal than that. 

My attacker (gulp!) pulled my hair. Pulled. My. Hair. As in my hair was grabbed and not let go. As in tendril tugged. As in a follicle assault. 

I am traumatized. 

My attacker wasn't the store's clerk that thought I was hitting on him when I asked him how to spell "wookiee" (see #8). 

As a matter of fact, there wasn't another person in the parking lot. That's part of the reason why my attack was scary. And traumatizing. I can barely get the words out to describe my ordeal to you.

Hons, I was attacked by a tree. An ornamental cherry tree to be exact.

I parked in an end parking slot, next to the ornamental cherry tree. All I wanted was to dash into the video store, return Return of the Jedi, rent Wall Street, and dash back out to my Honda. I accomplished all of those goals, but in the course of my journey I somehow, inadvertently angered the ornamental cherry tree.

The tree was angered to the point that it reached out and grabbed my hair. My beautiful, long, freshly highlighted, perfectly coiffed hair. Then the tree did the unthinkable.

It swayed gently in the breeze.

My hair was now tangled and knotted up in the tiny branches of an ornamental cherry tree in front of the video store. My hair was in the clutches of death. After having rebuffed the clerk's awkward advances, I knew he would be useless and it was up to me to save myself.

Somehow I masked my panic long enough to spend several tense minutes untangling my hair. Then I jumped in my Honda and backed out of my parking hole at breakneck speed, looking back only long enough to see a few strands of freshly highlighted hair hanging from the branches of the tree.

And I never dropped my rented copy of Wall Street. 

Clearly, I'm part super hero.

The regular citizen, non super hero part of me wonders what's going to happen when I return Wall Street to the video store. One thing's for dang sure: I'm parking at the opposite end of the lot and I'm not making eye contact with any ornamental cherry trees.

It's sad when good trees go bad, isn't it?

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