F1: The Giving Tree

My favorite book is The Giving Tree, by Shel Silversteen.  Shel is a man, in case you were wondering, and even though he writes these delicate children’s books, he has a scruffy beard and looks like a lumberjack that is also a part time murderer.  One of the reasons I like this book is because I like to imagine Shel Silversteen running in and chopping down the tree.  And then shooting a dude.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The Giving Tree is about a little boy whose best friend is a tree.  He plays with the tree, and the tree can talk, and the tree loves the boy, and everything is happy (and it says “and the tree was happy”).  Oh, I’m underlining this whole thing, aren’t I?  Whoops.  Well, I guess I’m too lazy to ununderline it, so I’ll just leave it if that’s okay with you.  It is?  Okay, good. 

Where was I?  Oh yeah, so this boy grows up to be a teenager, and he gets too old for playing with a tree, so the tree doesn’t see him for a while.  Then one day, the boy shows up to the tree and the tree invites him to play like he used to.  The boy refuses.  “I am too old to play,” he says.  “I need money.  Do you have money.”  “No, I’m sorry Boy, I don’t have any money.  But you take my apples, Boy, and sell them.  Then you will have money and you will be happy.”  The boy, like a selfish jerk, takes all the apples and leaves.  And the tree was happy.

The tree doesn’t see the Boy for another year, but eventually he shows up and he is a young man.  The same drill happens, only the boy takes the trees branches, and then her trunk, and I’m running out of time, and then finally she’s just a stump, and she’s not as happy anymore.  But the Boy comes back as an old man looking for a place to sit, and he sits on the stump and the tree is happy.