Fuck This Tree

Fuck this tree.

This fucking tree. I promise I don’t normally start stories in medias res, but I can’t help it. This tree is a giant, nine-foot, demonic, home-wrecking, total piece of fucking shit.

Commandant L.S., face full of Christmas rage.

I say this as I stand next to my family’s royal failure of a tenenbaum, something which even Linus from Charlie Brown would be ashamed to be associated with. This tree has taken so much time from me, enacted so much emotional stress on my family, that I can’t help it if I no longer see it as an inanimate fucking object. It’s got a life of its own. It’s a damn demon tree. I’ve stood next to it, supporting it, for the last 90 minutes, trying to keep it from falling over again. I only momentarily take my hands off of it to help unwind the garland and remove the ornaments, and I swear it knows that I’m starting to trust that it won’t fall over, so it decides to make a move to take out the window behind me.

Like most disasters one lives through, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the tree first fell, a little over two hours ago. Except that, like most disasters one lives through, the trauma of the event likely prevented my memory from working correctly. I think I was playing video games in my room at home, waiting for my buddy to call me back about going out for a beer. But for all I really know, I was furiously masturbating to a Celine Dion song in the furnace closet down the hall when my mom shouted up to me.

How To Fail Your Finals Gracefully: An Urgent Letter From Your Exceptionally Well-Prepared Classmates

Hey there. Hi. Yes, you.

You, the person we’ve never seen in this class before. You, the one who tried to cram 7 equations and 168 pages the night before (160 pages because you skipped the real-world example blurbs). Let us introduce ourselves.

We are the members of the class that make up that 100-level distro you thought would be easy but woops you forgot at Northwestern every class is weed-out.  You may not know this but we hang out a lot. Where ,you may ask? Only every single one of the professor’s office hour session, and we haven’t seen you at a single one. In fact, we can’t even remember seeing you at one of the professor’s intimate home-cooked dinner parties either.