Could tragedy have been averted?

My first wife borrowed my pick-up while I was at work to go purchase a Christmas tree. (You would think I would stay away from stories about her...but this is important and revealing. In a non-pornographic way.)

This, by the way, was my fault. Something is wired wrong inside me where it is tough for me to get excited about holidays, particularly the decorating...because SOMEONE has to clean it up. And that somebody is hopefully NOT me.

So I had been slacking on getting the tree and she took it upon herself to go get it because she LOVED Christmas and decorations.

Now, there were reasons this was a bad idea...one being the pickup was on its last legs and sometimes would stall for no apparent reason, after which it may or may not restart.

Second, we had ferrets, two, named Smithers and Mr. Burns. They were fun, but they were dangerous, too...they loved to run and jump, to climb on stuff...so ferrets + Christmas tree with dangling ornaments potentially equalled disaster.

Anyway, she called me about an hour after she had picked up the pickup. She called me at work. In tears, Borderline hysterical.

"Something happened" were her first words. "Something really bad."

Now, if you know me, you know my first thoughts were she got in a crash and was at the hospital (a frequent occurrence with her, those hospital trips). My second thought was maybe the pickup had stalled and would not start in the middle of the road, got a huge ticket or even towed. My third thought was a ferret or two had been badly injured, possibly by chewing through Christmas light cords.

I tried to calm her down to the point where she could tell me what happened.

Finally, after several attempts, she got past her tears enough to sputter..."...tree...blew...road...splinters...gone".

Finally I figured out what had happened.

This genius, instead of...I don't know, putting the tree in the bed of the pickup with the sharp, narrow end toward the cab to minimize wind resistance? had instead done the opposite...

She put the tree on the top of the cab with the wide end exposed to the wind and gone bombing down the road towards home.

Not surprisingly, the wind saw this opportunity, caught the tree, blew it loose from the ropes and it got shattered in the roadway.

Not her finest hour.

I will never forget bursting into laughter when I figured out the tragedy so deep it had her in tears was over a Christmas tree flying off the pickup into traffic.

But the road did smell like pine on the way home...

I hope you find this story as ammusing as I do.