In my late twenties, I was working two rather monotonous jobs. I fell into a pyrrhic sort of anomie, always exhausted and quick to complain about all varieties of petty grievances. Monotony will do that to you, right? Anyway. I was beginning to think life had lost its lustre, At least in regards to my own rather tepid circumstances. You see, it wasn’t just the two jobs. My girl had left me for a younger guy, my polar opposite, spouting some shit about commitment phobia, said she was tired of waiting for me to get a bigger place, tired of waiting for me to replace the catalytic converter on my car (shit ran fine, ok? Loud as hell, but since when is a car required to be stealth?). Said these were ‘symptomatic’ of a larger apathy. So I took up the second job trying to prove some larger ethic, but she married the other dude, and I was stuck with two assfuck jobs besides. So that’s really the footnote to my current situation, the one I was trying to explain regarding my sense of stagnation, my lack of my faith, RE. life and the universe’s ability to deliver me a measure of excitement or stimulation. But I’m on a run the other day in the hour between my two jobs, the arches of my feet aching like they’re on fire, and two things happen in rather rapid succession that altered my current philosophy, RE. life and the universe‘s ability to deliver the goods. The first is that, as I’m running, an old man hails me down like I was a taxi driver or a police man. I thought about running past, because the general vibe was ominous, like I was going to be getting myself into some shit that was going to require undue exertion on my behalf in exchange for a very meager reward, most likely of the spiritual sort (as in, a pat on the shoulder, and a ‘God bless you,’ as if kind words can sustain rent, a car payment, and beers for the weekend). But then this old guy catches me right in the eyes with his sad, lonely old man eyes, and at that point I assume, well fuck, now he knows I’ve seen him and if I keep running, karma will come back on me with a vengeance (even though I don’t necessarily believe in that kind of thing, but better safe than sorry, right? I’m the same way when I fly, always praying when we hit turbulence). So I slow down, and my feet are about to explode they're so swollen. And this sad old man points up into the pine tree beside him. It’s a pretty damn impressive tree, maybe about fifty feet. Tall enough that you wouldn’t want it falling on your garage or anything. Now, this guy doesn’t look like he gets out much. He’s more or less milk colored. He’s got that flabby, saggy skin older folks get, the way wax melts. Apparently this old guy was flying a model plane and got it stuck right up there in that tall fucking pine tree (both of which are things, I’ll admit, I thought only kids did). Now, this isn’t just any old model plane. It’s got a heavy dose of sentimental value to this sad, lonely looking old guy with these gravel pit eyes and gross melted milk skin. He doesn’t want to go into details, he tells me, but he and this plane have been through quite a lot together, Let Me Tell You, quite a fucking lot (though he obviously doesn’t say fucking, as I’m quite certain he’s of the churchgoing sort). By this point he seems like he’s pretty close to tears. I wish you could see how lonely this old guy looks, I swear it would break even Stalin’s cold heart. Looks like he doesn’t have any family in the world and that he’s invested his entire happiness in the construction of model airplanes, and that this plane - the one stuck in the tall ass pine - is his prize plane, the one he built with his younger brother who died unexpectedly in some horrible kind of accident (the kind of accident that only ever happens to other people, a murder-suicide or a plane crash), and then, in the months following this cataclysmic loss won this old guy some kind of model plane National championship (assuming they have those things, which they probably do because this country has championships for every kind of crazy hobby, you know, so everyone can feel like whatever kooky passion they have is somehow worthwhile). Although, judging by the fact that this old guy just crashed this plane into a fucking pine tree, he probably didn’t win any kind of National championship in anything other than crashing perfectly good model planes into stationary objects. At which, I can tell you, this old guy excels. This plane is absolutely buried in the guts of this pine tree. Hell, it takes us two minutes of looking just to find the thing. We finally locate it, a solid forty feet up. Lodged just a few branches from the apex of this pine tree, which I don’t have to remind you is tall enough that you do not, under any circumstances, want it falling on your garage (not that you want any pine tree falling on your garage, but this one, especially, would do some real damage). Once we locate it, this old guy, rather wistfully says, Well I Don’t Suppose You Like Climbing Trees, Do You? He says it in that half-jokey manner we say things when we’re actually deadly serious, but we realize how preposterous a request it is (the way you might tell an ex-girlfriend, Hey, It Was Great Getting Coffee, Wouldn’t It Be Funny If You Blew Me In My Car Like Old Times?). I’m telling you all this so you understand the general dynamic between me and this old guy. Which is that he’s got a plane stuck in this big old pine and he’s hoping I’m crazy enough to risk life and limb to scale this tree to free his dear, beloved plane. Now, normally, I’d just say, Hey Old Man, Look At Me. I’m Getting Up There Myself, My Tree Climbing Days Are Behind Me (even though, in truth, I never had tree climbing days), at which point we could share a good natured laugh about how time betrays us all, and Oh Man Isn’t It A Bitch? and then I could get on with my run without this pathetic, nearly crying old man thinking I’m a complete selfish asshole. Because, look, it’s an absurd request to ask a complete and unknown stranger to climb forty feet into a tree to get down a model plane. A cat? Maybe. A child? Sure. But you’d call the fire department for these things, because they’re objects that it’s normal to become attached to. This old man knows he’s running dangerously close to being shit out of luck. At this point I notice that he’s got a length of rope on the ground, and a couple of big sticks tied to the ends of the rope. This just adds to the, already, impossible sadness of the tableau in which I, unexpectedly, find myself. But here’s the funny thing in it all: I’m feeling pretty good all of a sudden. And maybe it’s because I’ve been waking up before dawn the last few months for work, but I’m feeling pretty invigorated about this situation, I’m psyching myself up, eyeing up the tree the way a pimp might eye up a prospective whore, calculating how well her branches might hold up to various stresses, etc. I’m actually getting excited about the prospect of climbing up this fucking pine tree to grab this old man’s stupid fucking toy plane. Now most sane folks would just run away at this point, seeing as they are obviously on the threshold of losing their minds. But I’m feeling pretty good; my arches have even stopped hurting. So when this old man offers me forty bucks - One Dollar For Every Foot It Looks Like You’d Have To Climb - I’m practically halfway up the tree already. What the fuck, right? I make eight bucks an hour. Carpe Diem. The old dude is so goddamned happy he’s practically soiling himself with glee. So I figure that before either of us has second thoughts - me about risking life and limb in this big ass pine tree, the old man about shelling out forty bones for a model plane - I should get up inside this tree. Now, this takes a little longer than I expected it might. Have you ever climbed a tree? I guess they say the first branch is often the toughest. I feel like I’ve heard that slogan somewhere before, trite as it is. I wouldn’t have believed it if it weren’t for experience. It took me a solid two minutes to pull myself up into that tree. Now, this probably would have dissuaded a lesser man, but it just got me more determined. And besides, that stupid slogan is true: once you get off the ground, things get easier. In fact, it was almost like climbing a ladder. I found a pretty easy rhythm up in this tree, gliding up its trunk almost like a squirrel or something, like it was my second nature even. It’s so easy for me, I start thinking maybe I should have been a tree climber, gotten myself into one of those lumber jack Olympics you see on television. I mean, I’m really fucking moving, ok? And this old man is absolutely thrilled, standing down there safe on the ground saying things like, Oh Golly Boy, You’re Really Up There Now, Aren’t You? or I Bet You’ve Never Been This High Up, Have You? By the time I reach the plane, I’m feeling splendid; like a million bucks, as they say. Only problem is, the plane is hanging out there amongst the branches. It’s all tangled up, so that even if I’m shaking the branches it just gets caught in another. By now, concern is creeping into the old man’s voice, like he’s thinking What do I do if he can’t get the plane out? Do I pay him twenty bucks? or What do I do if this young fellow falls and breaks himself in half? But look, you don’t climb forty feet into a fucking tree just to come down empty handed. So I break off a nearby branch - Oh Dear, What’s That My Boy? - and shinny myself out a little closer to the plane. So I’m pretty far out there now, suspended, basically, with one hand holding onto the tree and the other poking at this model plane with the branch I’ve broken off. It’s at this very moment that it occurs to me I’ve effectively valuated my life at forty dollars. Then again, I think to myself, I was feeling pretty keen to climb this tree before the old man offered me the money. But who really knows, right? Because he did offer. So I can’t decide if hanging from this branch, risking life and limb, in someway devalues my life or validates me as a pretty-all-right-guy. Anyway, I doubt you care about this existential bullshit (I know I hate it when people telling stories start talking about the meaning of things, or the moral of their story). Point is, I get the plane out and it falls to the ground. The old man squeals with delight. I maneuver myself back down the big old pine without incident, save for a pretty nasty gash on my left knee. The old man gives me my forty dollars, and at first I insist I can’t take it, you know, to show that I’m sensitive and all, that I’m not just about money, that in my heart I was helping this old man for all the right reasons, but of course I eventually do accept the forty dollars (it’s almost like a dance, although we both know I’ll cave in the end). The sad, lonely old man doesn’t look all that sad or lonely anymore. He’s holding his plane under his arm, rambling about how many flights he and this plane of his have been through, how many rough times they’ve navigated together. And I’m, frankly, a little worried now that he’s going to have a heart attack brought upon by unbridled happiness. You Just Made An Old Man’s Month, he tells me, and hell I’d have to be blind to not believe him. By this point, I’m aching to get out of here. Sentimentality makes me uncomfortable. Thankfully, I’ve got work (that I’m now running late for, on account of climbing this tree and salvaging this old man’s plane), so I kindly thank the old man for his money, shake his hand, and get on my way, feeling, honestly, pretty goddamned good about the world, about myself, and about all kinds of spiritual things I can’t even begin to explain (you know the feeling, right? That swelling you get in your chest and stomach that makes you want to run up to the next pretty girl you see and tell her how beautiful she is and that you’d love to take her out for a nice dinner).

I suppose you’re wondering what the second event is, the second of two things that restored my faith in the unpredictability of my position, RE. life and the universe. Well I’ll tell you, since you’ve been this patient. I got home from my run and happened to have a missed call on my cell phone. It was a number I didn’t recognize. Now, usually, I just ignore these calls, considering most of them are bill collectors or politicians. But I’m still feeling pretty swollen from the adventure in the tree, so I’m thinking, Well, maybe it’s my ex-girlfriend and she got a new phone, or Maybe it’s an old friend calling to say they’re in town and we should catch up. The possibilities are suddenly endless, right? So I dial up this mysterious missed call, and a woman answers on the other end. She sounds pretty, with this nice, poised soprano voice. I suppose I’d describe it as velvety, soft. And she asks me who I am, and why I’m calling her. So I tell her my name, first but not last, and explain that I had a missed call from her. After a pause, she says, Well My Name Is Carol Thomas. I Didn’t Call You. Something Seems Fishy Here. And then she laughs this cute, self conscious laugh, and I imagine that somewhere in the world - wherever this mysterious Carol Thomas might be - there must be a man who has fallen deeply in love with this laugh, a man whose dreams are haunted by this beautiful, sing-song laugh. But then she stops laughing, and there’s this long, pregnant pause. And really, what are two complete strangers going to talk about? I could tell her about my ex-girlfriend, I suppose, or my two jobs. She might like to hear about the old man and his plane, and how I climbed the tree. I could leave out the part about the money, and she might think, Hey, this guy doesn’t seem so bad. Maybe, after telling her about the tree, she’d ask where I live, and Hey, Maybe We Could Get Coffee Or Something Sometime? But that seems pretty preposterous, right? Even considering how I suddenly feel pretty good about life and the universe and its strange and unforeseen turns of event. Instead, I laugh, too, and maybe she wants to tell me about how her son is failing math and she’s worried his life will amount to nothing and that he‘ll be in his late twenties working two assfuck jobs and pining for his ex-girlfriend who is married to somebody else, or about how she always wanted to be a sculptor but it just never panned out, and she’s spent years regretting not working harder at it. Who knows, right? What happens is that I tell Carol Thomas good bye, and that I’m sorry for bothering her, and that I hope she has a nice evening. Good Bye, she says, And Have a Nice Life. Then she hangs up.

Pretty funny, right?