THE DAY I HUNG MYSELF UP IN OUR TREE – GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD

Today I will post a memory from recent times before I lose grip on it forever. It appears that memories from a few short months ago are becoming harder to retain than those of 60 years ago. So, before I draw a blank on it completely, here goes.

It all starts one cold and cloudy day in late fall 2019. It was on a weekend when Ange had come home for a visit. On this Saturday afternoon, as I was about to go outside and clean our upper patio, ol’ Bubbaloo and Ange decided to go to the afternoon movies. I tell them “go enjoy yourselves. I am going to clean this deck. It will keep me busy for the next couple of hours.” Away they go. I then gather up all my supplies and head out onto the deck to start this distasteful task.

I close the patio door to make sure that cold air does not blow in and cool down the house. Clothed only in a long sleeve top, I get busy, sweeping, washing, wiping, polishing and otherwise rendering this patio suitable for inspection once ol’ Bubbaloo returns. It was cold out there. But because I was at home, I knew I could just pop inside whenever I felt the need. I must say I was grumbling a bit, because it was still months away from us using this outdoor patio again. But here I was cleaning it as if royalty was coming over later. Anyway, as always, doing as I was told, I was out there and making good progress.

About finished, I decided to put my tools, supplies and garbage inside the door while I arranged the table and then went in. I grab the door and give it a mighty heave, it did not budge. Geezus, it suddenly struck me, what it was, that I was trying to remember about the patio door, before I closed it. Seems like if you close it too hard, the hook on the locking mechanism, falls down and locks itself as tight as Alcatraz. A few months earlier I had locked myself and a friend out there after golf one day. We had to wait for Bubbaloo to come home and free us. Think that would stick with me, eh? Well apparently not.

I feel some bad words rising through the gorge in my throat. I cut them off and tell myself to remain calm, just call Bubbaloo and Ange and tell them to come home and rescue me. Reach in my pocket, no phone. I look through the locked window and there it is resting on the kitchen table. I calmly proceed to check all of the patio windows. Then two other patio doors to see if one of them may have been left open. Nope, they are all as tightly locked as a vault. Man, it’s starting to get chilly. I’m now really happy with the attire, I chose, for cleaning the patio on a cool fall afternoon.

I look over the patio rail and realize I am about 15 feet off the ground, to the top of the railing.That is, if I decided to climb over and jump out onto the lawn. I think about it and realize, jumping is out of the question. Without question, I’m sure I would have broken something had I tried. I think about smashing a window, but immediately trash that idea. It’s not that I was afraid of what Bubbaloo would do to me; well not really anyway.

So I decided to wait it out and hope for an early return of the moviegoers. “What, are you an idiot?” “You know they will be at least one hour later than what they said!” These and other negative thoughts played thru my mind as I tried to make myself comfortable in a patio chair. I was also wondering how long I could survive out there before hyperthermia set in. And they found me frozen in a patio chair popsicle position on their return. What happens next may sound unbelievable but is completely true: you cannot make this crap up!

Never being one to take the easy route out of bad situations. I now decide that I cannot just sit and wait for my fate to happen. Without, at least, some input from myself. So I start pacing around to try and figure out a way to climb down from the patio. What the hell, I’m only 71, half out of shape, overweight and a little insane, what could possibly go wrong?

There are a couple of palm trees, just about the same height as the railing, but they looked much to prickly to shinny down. I felt I would be torn to shreds if I slipped down while hugging a palm. They were full of knife like pieces sticking out from top to bottom. There was a big evergreen type tree that looked like a real candidate. But it was too far off the end of the patio to grab on to. On the other end was another evergreen type bush/tree with about 5 or 6 trunks coming out of one stump. They were up higher than the rail and I could reach one of the trunks. I decided that I would just grab onto the trunk, about 4″ in diameter and then kinda climb/slide down it. Great idea right?

Well it so happened that this one trunk had another trunk about 3 inches in diameter, growing next to it. Great this is what I’m looking for. I can use them both to climb down on. So, I climb over the rail, insert my foot in the opening between the two trunks and swing away from the railing and grab onto the tree. Aaaaahhhh, success, I’m now off the patio, about 12 feet in the air and one foot firmly wedged in between two parallel tree trunks. Next I just have to climb carefully down the tree holding onto the two trunks. Now, I suddenly realize that my foot has sunk down deep in between the V formed by these two trunks and was securely wedged-in, tight. I couldn’t get my foot out. I’m stuck. “Mama”, I cry out.

I am frozen in place, all but my foot which is slowly sinking deeper into this space between the two trees. What now? I decide that I would need to lean a bit backward to take the weight off my foot, which worked marginally. I got my foot free, but couldn’t maintain my grip and my knee now sank firmly between these two trunks. It didn’t go in as far as my foot, but it did wedge in a lot tighter than my foot. I fell over backwards and am now hanging upside down, with my head about 6 feet off the ground and my body held up by my knee, at about, 10 feet off the ground. I looked like a 220 pound piece of South African Biltong hanging from a tree.

Now I am completely a prisoner of this tree. I do not know what to do, but I do know that I sure don’t want to be caught in this position by Bubbaloo when she returns from her movie. I am completely helpless, I can’t go up, I can’t go down, and basically I can’t go anywhere because my knee is stuck so tight in between these tree trunks. Crap, what do I do now? I can hear the neighbour, puttering away in his garage, behind me and for an instance I contemplate calling out for help. But I only consider this for a fleeting instance, and then decide that I would rather be found frozen to death, hanging from the tree by Bubbaloo, than to let this old fool find me hanging out of one of my own trees and then run around telling everyone in the hood.

Now I am starting to get seriously cold, I’m shaking, the blood has all drained to my head, my knee hurts like hell, my foot is scraped raw and I have a few other stinging abrasions from where I fell over backwards. Panic is about to set in. I cursed that tree and wished it would fall down in the yard. That didn’t work, so I spent a few minutes feeling sorry for myself and wondering what the headlines would read once I was found, upside down, frozen to death in my own tree. I decide, before I give in to my fate, I would try one last time to extricate myself from this dangerous and embarrassing situation.

Slowly, inch by inch I pull my big old fat body, little by little, closer back, to an upright position. I know I would only have one try. If I failed and fell back down, then I would remain in that position until Bubbaloo smelled my carcass a few days after her return. I got myself up to about level with my knee, but had to take a break. My arms were not meant to pull 220 pounds of “lard” up a tree. I gathered all my strength and got myself into an upright (more or less) position where my torso was a little above my knee. I then reached down and slowly but surely, using both hands, while still hugging the trunk, worked my knee loose from its prison.

Once free, I don’t have many options for climbing, so my only choice was to hold on as hard as I could to the trunk and lean over until my knee was above my head. At that point I unceremoniously fell in a heap onto one of our Rhododendron bushes that borders the patio. Ahha, I’m free. I roll out of the bush, check for broken things, realize that I have survived and then scurry around to the backdoor in time to beat hypothermia and ol’ Bubbaloo home. Thinking back on it, this may not have been my finest hour. I had to think long and hard before I told Bubbaloo. What do you think her reply was? Simply, this “Are You Crazy”? Perhaps. As I said before, you can’t make some of this stuff up!