Natural

A few days ago I was at the park with a few friends. We were throwing the frisbee around - it was way too hot to start up a game. Plus, no one actually wanted to run. We'd do the thing where one person would throw it really high in the air and we'd all chase it off to who-knows-where. We never caught it. Instead we managed to appear to most people as a group of barbarians running in pseudo-random directions, since no one was really any good at judging where it was going.

Of course, in our brilliance we forgot to account for the fact that trees might be better at catching frisbees than we were. So we were all surprised when the wind caught the frisbee and it sailed off into the canopy, coming to a halt suspended probably around 100 feet above the ground.

I was crushed. That was my ARML frisbee. I'm pretty sure I'll never get a chance to get another one, so the thought of losing it up some tree in Austin, Texas was disappointing. The guy who threw it, of course, offered to buy me a new one. I told him not to worry about it, that I had plenty of frisbees.

Maybe I sounded a little bit more disappointed than I intended to, or maybe he had read what was written on the disc, or maybe he just felt bad. But the guy wasn't about to give up. He led us across a creek to a nearby construction site, gathered some rocks, carried them back, and started throwing them at the frisbee, hoping to shake it loose.

No one else, not even me, really cared that much. It was hot, and we finally had an excuse to sit down. We even had a source of entertainment - the guy was terrible at aiming the rocks. He hit the trunk of a neighboring tree on several occasions. I knew that he had played baseball for a long time - I sincerely hoped for the sake of his team that he didn't play a position that involved accurate throwing. Or throwing in any capacity.

But the guy wouldn't give up. It was his perseverance that inspired us to get up and help him out. Actually, it probably had more to do with the fact that you can only sit and watch someone throw rocks at trees for so long. We went to gather more rocks from the construction site. Someone climbed as far up the tree as they could while holding a few rocks and tried to hit it from there. Of course, we had to better coordinate our efforts. Falling rocks presented a legitimate danger if we weren't always aware when someone was taking a shot.

We actually hit the disc thrice, but it refused to dislodge from the foliage. Apparently this does not discourage people, but instead spurs them on. Who knew? But when someone finally hit the disc once more, it was shaken loose and fell to the ground. Everyone cheered. Meaningless task accomplished! We called it a day and went home.

Such 'adventures' are rare in my life. I don't spend a lot of time outside. Even when I did, it was always on the soccer field or the tennis court. There was some refreshing about playing in this random field. Stealing rocks from a construction site. Working toward some made-up goal like it was the object of those completely arbitrary games I used to invent when I was little. To the other people there, who had grown up in Texas, Mississippi, and California, it was probably the norm. To me, though, it was exhilarating. As a lifetime resident of the suburbs, it was nice to catch a glimpse of the childhood I never had. I have to say, it doesn't seem half bad.