OP-ED: Three strikes and a lifetime of splinters
At about 9 years old, I decided I wanted to build a treehouse.
We had a sturdy black walnut tree in our backyard, and I had amassed a pile of old weathered fence slats with enough splinters to disable a battalion of enemy soldiers. I had a handful of nails I had painstakingly pulled from discarded boards I found under a shed, most of them bent, a hammer, a hand saw, and a rope to haul everything up to a limb about eight feet off the ground.
Looking back, I give myself points for both enthusiasm and stupidity.
My first mistake was trying to build a floor on a single limb. That turned out to be about as stable as balancing on top of a flagpole. Then I tried connecting another branch that happened to be at a completely different height. The three boards I hammered in place had enough pitch that every time I sat down, I nearly rolled out of that tree.
The old fence boards were dark gray from years of weathering. Their pointed ends could have doubled as Stone Age spears. Instead of driving it home, every swing of my hammer bent another nail almost completely in half.
It was well over 80 degrees, and every time I got thirsty, I had to crawl down that tree trunk back to earth. I wrapped my arms and legs around the trunk and shimmied like a drunk chipmunk. Splinters found places to stick that I never expected.
I worked on that disaster for hours. On a scale of one to 10, I made it to about 1.2. Eventually, I climbed down, looked up at my crooked collection of boards, and admitted total defeat.
Fast forward six decades.
Because of my unfulfilled childhood dream, I decided our grandkids deserved a treehouse, and I was finally going to redeem myself, but this time I had a little money, but still no plan.
The grandchildren were about 9, 6, and 4. They were enthusiastic supervisors but not much help with construction. By then I also had so many heart stents I could set off airport security alarms. Plus, I had the construction strength of an amoeba.
I hired a friend’s teenage son to help with the heavy lifting and enlisted my lifelong buddy, Jim, who was already in his 70s. Jim had the wisdom. I supplied the urgency (and much of the stupidity).
At the local lumber yard, we bought sturdy lumber and built a substantial deck between two healthy limbs about five feet off the ground. The fellow behind the counter had assured me that brass screw-in lag bolts would easily support the weight. Jim quietly suggested we use heavier hardware. I listened to what I perceived to be the lumber expert instead. (You already know where this is going.)
After four blistering days, we had a platform, a metal storage shed converted into a playhouse, and even a homemade rope ladder. The grandkids loved it. So, did I. Then one autumn afternoon a week after a heavy windstorm, I drove into my daughter’s driveway, and the treehouse was gone. The bolts had failed, the platform had collapsed, and the shed was destroyed.
Strike two.
Then my son handed me one final opportunity. He bought a prefabricated playhouse for his daughters. At last, a project with instructions. We assembled it, admired our work, and celebrated our first successful construction project together ever. About a month later it became the preferred residence of every hornet Western Pennsylvania.
Strike three.
And here is what I finally understand: Life is not scored by the projects that collapse, the nails that bend, or the hornets that take up residence in your victories. Life is measured by the stubborn hope that sends you back up the tree anyway because somewhere inside you is the 9鈥憏ear鈥憃ld who still believes the next swing of the hammer might just hold.
Nick Jacobs lives in Windber.