Despite All My Glee, I Am Still Just A Bear In a Tree

Happy pre-Mother's Day! You should watch this video of a momma bear rescuing her baby bear from a tree at the bearpark in Berne (it is really called a Bear Park; I went when I was in Berne doing Einstein research for my senior thesis production. Quelle reve! A park full of BEARS. Bears.) (link via Claire Zulkey's facebook update.)

Also, and not in a fishing way, more in a musing out loud way, I sometimes wonder who would rescue me if I were stuck in a tree.

When I was 7 or so, we went to a barbecue at a friend's house in Glen Rock and I climbed a tree. Getting up the tree was very easy. Getting out of the tree was terrifying. So I stayed in the tree and cried and my dad told me he was taking my allowance away (this was during the 4 month phase of my life when I got an allowance; I am pretty sure it was taken away after the stuck-in-a-tree incident and never reinstated). I was probably in the tree for a few hours, crying hysterically, as my dad tried to coax me down. I think eventually someone stepped on a stool and helped me down - I was probably only 6 feet in the air. But it was terrifying! I was paralyzed with fear and I was pretty sure I was going to fall out of the tree and die if I moved at all. (To this day I am pathologically afraid of heights. I am so much fun to be around!)

And so, although, admittedly, I am scared of many things that will probably never actually happen, such as being on a boat that gets turned over by a whale and then being trapped under said boat and drowning, or somehow surviving a nuclear armageddon and then having to stick it out, The Road-style, there is definitely a chance that I could once again climb a tree and get stuck in it. Great. Now there is one more thing about which to worry and one less reason to sleep at night.

You know those terrible horrible online dating commercials where the girl is like "I'm just a goof, looking for my ball?" (Which, seriously, someone approved this copy? Because in my head, she is actually saying "I'm just a vagina, looking for a scrotum!") Anyway. My point is, "I'm just a baby bear stuck in a tree, looking for someone to rescue me."