Month: September 2024

What’s a guy to do when there is a potential murderer in his backyard?

Shoot (or chop) first! Surely it can’t be that frickin’ hard…

“Okay, FINE, I’ll pony up the amount of the original quote–$3200–but not a penny more!”

I pressed end on the call, sat down, and promptly wrote a check out to J&D Tree pros, more relieved than anything else to wash my hands of The Saga of the Killer Trees that had been stretching on for almost 4 months.

If I’m honest, I was still a least a wee bit miffed about getting stiffed on my promised 10% discount. You see, in the process of negotiating a price for the imminent and imperative arboreal removal that I was so desperate for, I had hatched a scheme with one of the tree guys in which if roped any of my neighbors into getting tree work done while the tree amigos were in our hood, then I could earn a 10-20% discount off my work.

I mean, I had debased myself and gone door-to-door, pleading with “neighbors” who obviously didn’t recognize me to cut down any pain-in-the-ass trees they might have had on their property. Anticipating the lack of familiarity with those residing more than 2 doors down from us, I had similar thoughts to those of Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite:

However, instead of wearing a laminated name tag to lend myself an air of legitimacy, I had come up with a much better plan: our youngest daughter had just been born only a few months earlier,so I dragged her stroller along with me on my quest for that 600-dollar-discount, with her napping peacefully inside. You would have figured that would have bought me a little bit of trust from my skeptical neighbors, at least demonstrating that I was a local family man and not some skeezy door-to-door salesman, right?

Sadly, not so much. Despite hitting up all houses within a 8-unit radius–that’s a space spanning 17 homes if you count ours in the middle–only one neighbor (ironically, a former Park Ranger who was something of a tree expert himself) decided to take me up on my too-good-to-be-true offer.

Well, maybe the real reason was that almost everyone had the same reaction to the discounted quote they received:

“Over a grand per tree?!? You must be ----- crazy, Tree Dude. Naw, bro, I think I’ll just keeping raking leaves if it’s gonna cost that much!“

–(Almost) Every Single One Of My Neighbors

It actually put me in awkward situation, where I dang near was arguing with those who were complaining about the price, in attempt to contextualize the situation–I mean, those ----- idiots didn’t realize what a deal they would be getting!

Trust me. I would know. And that’s what this little tale is all about. But before stepping too far back in time, I’ll least explain why I ended up getting at least some of the discount I was promised for doubling their business. The guy who came and quoted our work? I guess he was new to the company, and somehow, that contributed to him missing this key detail on the backside of one of the two trees we had removed:

The dude had totally missed the most important detail about our tree removal needs: the structural unsoundness of the behemoth of a tree looming ominously in our backyard. For more context, here’s a picture of it creepily stalking our back porch, waiting for the right moment to come crashing down on us–or worse, or neighbor!

Oh, did I mention the “Behemoth” part? Did I? But really, did I? Let me give you a shot of looking straight up the trunk of this punk:

So now that you understand the situation, maybe you can better appreciate when the boss of the estimator guy, when pressed as to why I didn’t get a discount, responded accordingly:

“For how dangerous this tree was and for what we ended up having to do we have already lost money doing it for the quoted price…that tree alone should’ve been about 4500 to 5000 for that tree alone and the amount of risk we had to take…”

Yeah, buddy, just because your boy thought your little chainsaw monkeys could climb these beasts in a traditional manner instead of…well, what you ended up doing, that’s not my problem…

“Excuse me?!? Exactly where is the comma in that number? Wait–nevermind it doesn’t matter. Thanks anyways…”

I pressed end on the call, and just kept on walking to work. I had thought that I could find a more reasonable price than J&D’s $3200 by getting multiple quotes. I was wrong.

I didn’t even remember which tree company I had just been talking to–I was in too in shock with the price they had quoted me. Now, I was walking briskly down a semi-busy street trying to get to work on time, so we weren’t having the clearest of conversations to begin with, but I swear the person on the end of the line said they could take care of my trees for the low-low price of…$48,000? Or was it $4800? Honestly, neither of those two numbers made sense. On one hand, $4800 would seem the more reasonable of the two, but…the way they delivered the news–like somebody in the family had died–in addition to some comments thrown in there about “insurance making only a small dent in the overall cost” and “how good is your credit, cuz you almost assuredly don’t have that kind of cash just sitting around,” made me doubtful that the could actually do it for less than $5k. At that point the second best quote I had heard was somewhere around $7500–most of which was going to be sunk into a crane big enough to sit in our front yard and reach the trees in the back. (I forgot one detail: the spaces separating all the surrounding homes weren’t wide enough for anything girthier than a cherry-picker (bucket truck) to squeeze through, and there was no way in hell that one of those shorties would be able to get the job done.

I had even suggested to the neighbor whose house was in imminent danger of being crushed by this tree–the guy who were about to go into massive amounts of debt just to protect–that I pay to have his A/C unit temporarily moved so we could get some equipment bigger than a cherry-picker but cheaper than a massive crane into our backyard, then have it replaced afterwards. He was not pleased about this idea.

Which I kinda of thought to be an asshole move, considering it was for his benefit. Even if it would have cost $1k to do that, it would have been a clever and economic move, for at that particularly point in time we hadn’t been able to get any company to even give us a quote. The most concrete we had then was some guy casually throwing around the words “twenty thousand, if you’re lucky”.

So oh, what’s that, you say? “Oh but surely the quote you’re currently talking about simply couldn’t have been $48,000!”

Well, my friend, let’s take a step even further back in time, even before the informal threat–er, I mean, “quote”–of twenty thousand buckaronis…

“Hmmm…yup…uh huh…interesting…”

I stood there next to the very first tree expert to come give me a quote, waiting for his expert assessment.

Oh, how sweet and naive I was in those moments leading up to when reality came crashing down on me like a 70-foot tree onto a neighbor’s house. I honestly was expecting him to fairly quickly spit out a number around $500–but I would have been happy with anything at $800 or less.

I mean, I would have even been unsurprised–unhappy, yes, surprised, no–with a number between $1k and $2k. I was new to the whole cutting-down-massive-tree scene, after all.

My first surprise was how long it took to get any answer out of him. Once we got back there to the trees in question, he just sat there for 5-10 minutes looking the tree up and down, all while making pontificating noises such as “huh, that’s interesting”, *deep heavy sigh*, “mmm-hmmm, okay then”, *low whistle*, *stroking of beard*, “I don’t know about this…” and other things you never want to hear in such a situation.

Eventually, he turned to me with a face that was way more serious than the occasion called for.

“Son, I gotta tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a situation quite like yours. This tree is just massive, has significant structural damage–and I mean significant–and worst of all, is virtually inaccessible. I mean, your house backs up to 180 feet of woods before hitting Highway 64, and nothing is getting in between the houses…”

“Can you at least give me a ballpark figure?” I asked, bracing for the initial sticker shock of such a project.

“Um, I don’t think you understand…I don’t think it’s even possible for me and my crew to do.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure we don’t have any means to actually get that tree down. I don’t even know if there is a crane that is small enough to fit on your street but big enough to get back here…”

“Now what are you trying to say?!?” I said, getting even more confused, and clearly not appreciating the emotional roller coaster I found myself on.

“…however…there might be one option…” he said, clearly digging deep to give me some sort of real information.

“Yes…?” I said with bated breath.

“What I’ve seen done in extreme situations like this is…well, you’re not going to like it…”

“Out with it already–one way or another this tree has got to come down before it kills somebody!”

…

…

…

“…I said, ‘Good luck finding someone out there who will do that for you’. Again, I apologize for not being able to help you out.”

He was mid-sentence when I came-to moments late, after having–according to him–blacked out in shock upon hearing what appeared to be the only option for keeping my family and neighbors safe.

“Cheeses ducking heist. I don’t think I heard you right. Just for the record, could repeat again what you said?”

“Well, there’s no other way to put it: son, it looks like you’re going to need to rent a helicopter…”

Content created on: 13 September 2024 (Friday)

You know “three strikes and you’re out!”, the classic baseball analogy?

Yeah, I bet you never expected to hear THAT down at your local DMV…

“Uhhh…Q…E…B–no, no, I mean D…and, um…7?”

I wiped the sweat from my brow and looked nervously at the kind old lady running the show at the Morton County DMV. Sure, it was the middle of the summer, but it wasn’t heat-sweat that was drenching me–this was stress-sweat.

“Oh, Sweetie, that was so close, but still not quite right,” she said as gently as possible.

No matter how nicely she broke the news to me, though, the cold hard truth of the matter was that I was on the precipice of losing my legal privilege to operate a motor vehicle.

“Ummm,” I hemmed for a moment, trying to buy myself some time for some subsequent hawing. “Say, since I’m just renewing my license, are you absolutely sure I can’t use my glasses for this eye test?”

“Are you going to be driving with those glasses on?” she asked, inspecting the frames of the pair I had brought with me just in case my contact lenses became too unbearable to wear. “I’m pretty sure those weren’t in style since 1994.”

For the first time in an interaction otherwise full of the loving kindness you would expect from a rural Kansas granny archetype, I must say: I felt targeted.

“And…?” I said, somewhat defensively.

“It’s 2001. And from the looks of you, I’d say you haven’t worn them since you were in what? Eighth grade?”

What can I say? The old lady had me pegged almost to a tee. But I wasn’t going to let her win that easily.

“Ma’am, I’ll have you know that I wore those right up until I got contacts halfway through my Sophomore year,” I replied, trying to feign indignity.

“Nevertheless, young man, I need you to answer the question: are you going to go out cruising to pick up young lassies wearing your eighth grade glasses? Because if you use them for this test, then you will be legally obligated to wear them then as well–and you could get arrested if you get caught driving bare-faced.”

She gave me a stern look, like she was trying to scare me straight.

“Arrested? Really? That doesn’t sound quite right…” I said with a hint of skepticism.

“Okay, so maybe not arrested, but you could get a ticket.”

“Oh. Okay then,” I said quietly. “How about I try putting my contact lenses back in?”

“You can do whatever you want, but you only get two more attempts before I will be legally required to fail you.”

I sighed heavily. Fml, I thought.

“Okay, give me a moment…”

However, after fumbling with my right contact for nearly 5 minutes before getting it to stay in, I had to immediately pop it back out.

“Ow, ow, ow! I can’t. I just can’t.”

“What’s wrong with your contacts anyways?” she asked with genuine concern.

I gave her a sheepish look.

“I may have gone a few extra months before swapping out my last pair of ’30-day lenses’…so, yeah, they’re kinda starting to bother me,” I related to her.

“Oh, in my line of work, I see that all the time, but usually it’s not a problem. Exactly how many months has it been?” she inquired.

I paused to count backwards to when I had last gone to the eye doctor, and then counted forward 6 months to when I should have renewed my supply, but didn’t because…y’know…who had the time or money for that when you’re a poor college freshman?

“Oh,” was all I could say as I realized I had really lost track of time and that it had been much longer I had thought it had been. “Uh, I plead the fifth!”

“Okie dokie, suit yourself. I guess that’s not really my problem anyways. How about you give the bottom row another whirl without the glasses or contacts. You’ve stalled long enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“Ok…here goes: Q (or maybe O), E…let’s say ‘S’ this time…and I think that last one is a trick question, isn’t it? It’s a question mark, not a 7, amiright?”

“Oooh, so sorry, but not even close. And I can’t accept a ‘this or maybe that’ response. You have to pick a lane, if you will. Now…one last time. Take all the time you need, alright?”

At least she was rooting for me, even if she ultimately had to flunk me.

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention, this was happening halfway through the summer that I had planned on spending working with my dad, but after 6 weeks of co-farming, our relationship had been strained to the point of breaking. So in a day or two I would be heading back to Manhattan (KS) where I was going to college. I had to renew my license while was back home or else I would be at the mercy of my friends for transportation until Christmas.¹Note: in retrospect, I’m not sure it is true that I could only renew my license in my hometown/home county. I’m pretty sure I could renew it any Kansas DMV, but I guess I was too young and stupid at 20 years old to know it was much less complicated than I was making it.

I dropped an f-bomb under my breath. The pressure was almost too much.

“Q. I’m definitely going to go with Q for the first one.”

“Good, good” she said.

“And if I squint a little bit–“

“No squinting!” she said sternly.

“Oh, right…right,” I said, but it was already too late. I couldn’t unsee what I was pretty sure I had seen. “I think that second letter is actually B.”

I paused for affirmation, but she remained silent. Uh-oh.

“And…D…?” I half-asked, thinking that maybe I had had it right the first time.

“Take your time…”

I took that comment to mean that maybe I should try that one again.

“No, on second thought maybe that’s another B,” I wagered.

“Okay, well that doesn’t make any sense. Why would we repeat the same letter back-to-back on one of these tests? That would just be cruel and unusual,” she said, obviously hinting once again that maybe I wasn’t quite nailing it.

Whew. I sat back for a second and took a deep breath, before leaning forward and sneaking in a quick squint.

“Oh…I see now. It’s an O.”

I paused again, looking for some feedback, but she was completely expressionless.

“And that last letter?” she asked.

“Maybe that’s a 1?”

She hesitated for a moment before breaking the silence.

“You passed.”

I let out a huge sigh of relief. I couldn’t believe I had passed, because in all honesty, I wasn’t confident in any of my guesses. (Of course, there’s always the possibility that I had not got them all right, and she told a little white lie out of the kindness of her heart, but we best not bother our pretty little heads entertaining such notions.)

“Congratulations. Now, let’s get your picture and get you out of my hair–er, I mean out the door.”

Afterwards, when I was sitting in the privacy of my car, I put my eighth-grade glasses on and took a closer look at my picture on the newly renewed license.

“Wha-a-a?!?” I exclaimed upon discovering that my eyes were waaaay more irritated with my aborted attempts to wear my contacts than I could have imagined. I mean, I freakin’ looked like Nick Nolte’s mugshot (that technically wouldn’t be taken for another year in 2002):

“I really gotta do something about those old contact lenses…I look like I’m drunk–at best!Though it really looks like I’m all hopped up on crack-cocaine…”

The point of the story is that maybe, just maybe, it’s not the best idea to go 16+ months wearing the same pair of 30-day contact lenses. Even if you are a poor college student, for the love of all that is holy, please, take good care of yourself.

And spoiler alert: this story appears not have a happy ending. A month or so later I finally went to an eye doctor, who promptly informed that I had Stage 3 blepharitis–I swear I’m not making that condition up–and that I would never be able to wear anything but expensive-ass disposable 1-day contact lenses for the rest of my life…and that’s how I ended up switching back to being a glasses type of guy pretty much full-time. Yup, I was back to being 100% nerdling, all because I was too cheap and/or lazy and/or “that doesn’t look like anything to me” attitude-having to deal with the problem in a timely manner.

However, upon further refraction–er, I mean ‘reflection’–in my later years, I have come to the conclusion (with the help of my very astute and affirming Beautiful Bride), that I’m actually much more handsome and eye-catching to the ladies with glasses. Imagine that without them, my white af face combined with my near-translucent eyebrows and facial hair, my visage is vast, featureless desert, save for my beautiful blue eyes.

But with glasses, there is interesting contrast that catches one’s eyes and subconsciously causes their brain to say “hey, why don’t you let your gaze lingering just a bit longer on this charming fella.”

It’s like in the Big Lebowski, for me, glasses are The Dude’s rug that “really tied the room together…”

I know that we’ve strayed pretty far afield here, but why not we end this little chat with that very clip (note: contains adults words, Mother discretion is advised…)

Content created on: 29/31 August 2024 (Thurs/Sat)