A Tree Falls in Staten.

people always think that sissy and i make up stories. i do. a little bit. okay. a lot. but mostly just in my own head. sometimes i spread my internal rumours to bear. eventually the story will leak out to sissy who will then point out that said statement is totally false and i (and bear) are both delusional and lonely.

having said that, this story is totally true:

the other night while cheating on our aforementioned celebreality diet (with wine, natch. we don't cheat with food. liquid diet, folks) we received a phone call from Disco alerting us to the fact that our parents eighty year old pine tree ripped it's own roots out of cement and fell precariously next to our house, taking down a fence and resting in one of it's neighboring trees. granted this could have been a tragedy. but we're not in that shakespearean mode this week. so instead it's a constant source of amusement. how does an almost century old tree fall? how did our parents know it fell? well, Disco was outside bbq-ing (mmmm, meat) when he noticed that the tree was at a rather peculiar angle. always prepared, though never a boyscout, our father moved his car from the driveway just in case. about a half-hour later a noise was heard which our mother describes as "a large bucket of clothespins falling" (yes, seriously. imagine our lysol infused childhood please), our father compared to thunder, and two rando busy-bodies across the street identified as an earthquake (but they're from the house with the suburban drug problem). anyway after realizing that no laundry assistants were to be found, mother rushed to the dining room window to pull up her every perfect white and straight venetian blinds to experience the oh-so-chevy-chase scene of a giant pine tree pressed against the side of the house. the great thing about this story is that if the tree had fallen a few feet in any other direction it would have caused major havoc, but in the true style of our family, danger was narrowly avoided and hilarity ensued. the fun continued with an army of bewildered firemen and the discovery of a recently severed root on neighboring property (sabotage anyone?). all of this while sissy and i were confined to our couches in astoria. of course when we move out the island finally starts getting interesting. more when punishment is doled out to the offending neighbors.

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