Ali P.

My name is "Sarv".

I am a tree.

I bet you didn't know trees have names. I am, like you people, someone's offspring. I do look and act like my parents.

I had a good childhood. Good food, good water, lots of sunshine. Then, suddenly black clouds appeared from nowhere. Everyone thought it would never turn into a storm.

But it did. No one had ever seen anything like that. Everyone paniced , but it was too late. Strong winds broke many branches and many trunks.

The wind pulled me off the ground. I thought it would never happen.

It was painful.

I suffered some minor injuries. I didn't care about my branches; they will grow back. I was worried about my roots. They were not strong enough yet.

Leaving parts of my roots behind, the wind threw me in a foreign land. I was glad I was on solid ground again.

The new land was kind to me. The trees around me looked somewhat different and acted somewhat different. I learned to act like them.

Once again, the water was good and the sun was shining.

It has been years since I have landed here. My trunk grew strong and solid. I look like just another tree. That's because you cannot see my roots. Some grew back and are holding my trunk, but the rest never did. The premise that some day, somehow, I will go back to the old valley slowly vanishes in front of my eyes, and with that, the rest of my roots are drying out, and dying, one by one.

My name is "Sarv". I am a tree.

Ali P.

* * * * *

I finally got to clean up some of my old junk out of my closet, and I came across this paper I wrote in college. I thought I'd share it here with all those who took English Composition 101, or are taking it now.

The first time I took ENC 101 in college, with Dr. Davis, I dropped it. The professor had us read Dickens and Faulkner, and discuss them. Too tough for me at the time. So I waited until I could get into Janet's class.

Janet was an ultra liberal, tree-hugging, peace loving Californian who didn't care much about all these dead writers. She was also kind of young, and cute, and insisted us to call her by her first name.She wanted us to write from the heart.

One day she had us go outside, pick something in the nature, and write about it right away in the class, and turn the paper in. That grade would be our midterm grade.

"Tree-hugger, huh?", I thought to myself."I'll give you something to hug."

* * *

This is what I wrote that day. Professor Davis would have thrown it in my face( telling me,"you are not a tree; you are a moron!") but Janet made some lovely notes on my paper , and gave me an A. I got a B in the class, and later took Comp II with Janet, and passed .

Whereever she is tonight, I am drinking a glass of wine to her.

( Although, despite all that, I never got my hug from the Tree-hugger)