Tower of Babel, Tree Fort Style!

When’s the last time you stubbed your toe? Stepped on a Lego, or a nice pointy rock? I think to be human is to hurt your feet. Of all the parts of our bodies we hurt, our feet get the worst of it. I can’t say for sure that my sister Molly has the best stories for foot injuries, but it’s right on up near the top.

I was an avid builder growing up, my dad would buy all this wood for projects around the house, and if it went unused for a day or two, I would reuse it in tree houses, forts or other amazing things, such as siege towers and catapults. One such project was the replacement tree fort, the first, having been destroyed by a vengeful mother nature and a falling tree. It was grand; we had built of the failure of our first attempts and finally mastered the skills to build the thing well. It was our own Taj Mahal, a two story tree fort built from Pine trees and Tennessee Tulip Poplar, three sheets of plywood my dad had cut into sections for wall repair in the garage and an old playground ladder. Being the safety minded person I am, the older children (Kathleen and I) instituted that only we could work on the fort while under construction. With no railings, and nails everywhere it was rather dangerous.

The first floor went up easily and the railings were up, we moved upwards, a regular tower of Babel. The stairs/ladder installed, I began work on the roof/ceiling, and I called for Kathleen to bring me up the next pine log and some nails. She was busy working on clearing the trail to the fort and could not. So the next best person, Molly climbed up with the log and nails. She just stayed up with me while I worked.  After a while, it was time for a break, all five of us were going to go make some lemonade and girl scout cookies to reward us for the hard labor involved with constructing castles. I jumped from the 2nd story to the ground, because well, I could.

We in the family don’t know why Molly does or says half the things she does or says, she has imparted such wisdom to us, such as: "What if the Sun was a star!" and questions like" Are Blueberries a wonder of the world?" Today was one of those days that she just baffled us. I turned to Molly and told her to go down the ladder because she would hurt herself if she attempted such a jump. Kathleen agreed with me, which is a rare occurrence. We all stood and watched as Molly jumped from the roof to the floor and crashed in a heap. We turned to leave and Molly said, "I'm stuck to the floor! Come help me get out!" How can you be stuck to a floor, we called back. Well at least she wasn’t dead. But the look on her face said it all. Molly rarely cries, she just whimpers the word Ow ow ow over and over, and that’s what she began to do.

Rushing over to help her, we discovered a board pulled from some old tree fort had been left on the building material pile and was now firmly attached to molly's shoe. We tried to pull it off, to which end no board came off and Molly just howled in pain. Panicking now we grabbed the hammer and tried to pry or beat it off. Same result as before. We resorted to the last option, letting our mother deal with it. (This is generally the best option, but always the last one we used; it generally meant trouble would be doled out)

Picking up Molly we rushed to the house, which was almost a 1/4 mile away, Molly's foot dangling with a 2 foot pine log held on by a nail. I have always been struck that we could not pull the nail out with hands and hammer, but good ole gravity did a great job as we ran home. I don’t know why my mother bothered asking us what happened sometimes. I mean it’s obvious what happened, Molly has a nail in her foot, it’s not like I nailed it in on purpose. (Though some day’s I’m sure my mother was ready to nail me to a wall.)

Long story short, Molly lived, even thought the nail went all the way into the top of her shoe. And Molly never did listen to me, even when I was right and not trying to hurt her.

Hope today's a good one,
austininva