Today at the gas station the SUV in front of me had a bumper sticker that said:

TREES ARE THE ANSWER!

There are plenty of goofy bumper stickers out there, but trees are the answer?  Come on now.  Granted, this SUV also had a license plate that said TREHUGR so what do you expect? A mature person might smile and say “Well isn’t that just swell!” Or better yet, disregard it as a catchy slogan for Greenpeace. 

But we are talking about me here.

I had to think about this for the rest of my commute to work.  Trees?  Now I am as big a fan of a functional, clean, working ecosystem as the next person, but I am pretty sure that trees are not the answer.  At least to most questions.  So in order to get over the viewing of this wretched bumper sticker I had to think up some questions where trees would in fact be the answer:

“Hey!  Where should we tie this tire swing?  I’ll be danged if I can’t think of a single place to put it!”

“Gosh darn it all!  The neighbors just painted their house purple!  Whatever can we do to block it out of our line of sight?!?!  I’m thinking Legos!  Really big Legos! Does anyone have a better idea?”

“Damn this unexpected ice age!  We’ve burned all the furniture, Maude!  We’re going to freeze to death! What in the world is left to burn?”