tree hugging.

Did you know that I used to be a tree hugger?

In the fifth grade, I became aware of the plight of the rainforest, of the endangered giant golden-crowned flying fox, of the ozone layer, of anything Mother Nature related that had a plight. Thinking back, I don't remember what started me on this environmentalist fervor - probably some nature show meant to enrage people by employing lots of sentiment and misleading statistics.

I did what any outraged eleven year old with a rapidly deteriorating home planet would do: I started a club. Inspired by the weekday afternoon advertisements for Kids F.A.C.E (Kids For A Cleaner Environment), I started K.C.E. - Kids Caring for the Environment. My club was totally different from those Kids F.A.C.E. losers. You could tell we really cared about the environment - it was right there in our name.

I enlisted the help of my classmates. My fifth grade teacher encouraged the whole enterprise by allowing me class time to explain what my club was and how we were going to care for the environment. I elected myself president and collected one dollar in dues from a dozen kids or so. The other kids went for it because I was the smart kid, and at that age, being smart was still cool. Had I known about the upcoming drastic drop in my popularity, I would have started a club that lobbied for dork coolness.

Each month, we had a theme. The first month was "Hug a tree" a phrase that I most likely heard from Rush Limbaugh, whose radio show was broadcast every day into the ears of my parents and whatever unsuspecting children might be around. My adult siblings thought this theme hilarious, and my brother Knocker even had me pose for a picture in which I was physically hugging a tree. It's been about thirteen years, but I think now that they were probably making fun of me. Thinking back on all this, I realize that Rush Limbaugh didn't use the term "tree-hugger" as a compliment. So while I was really a kid who just didn't get the joke, I prefer to delude myself that I was being satirical.

Misguided names or no, we actually did some stuff. The dues we collected went towards a membership in the Arbor Day foundation or some tree thing. Whatever foundation it was, they promised us that 2500 square feet of the rainforest would not be cut down. I'm not sure how that works, but it doesn't matter, because we never got around to sending in the ten dollars. I think it might have been eventually embezzled by the club treasurer, but I've decided not to report her to the authorities for fraud, mostly because I figure I could probably be held responsible in some way. I also had plans to adopt a whale and name it Kasey E. Whale (get it? K.C. E. Whale!), but that never happened due to the embezzlement incident and the general loss of interest in the whole thing on my part. There was one afternoon where the entire class voluntarily and spontaneously spent a whole recess period picking up trash off the playground area. One kid was the hero of the day because he even picked up cigarette butts, which the rest of us thought were too nasty to touch with our bare hands. I later found out this same kid had a crush on me, and I wonder if the cigarette butts were his secret cry for love. It's like the sweetest creepy thing anyone has ever done for me.

I saw the summer after fifth grade as a good opportunity to let my whole tree hugging past fade away. I decided I wasn't really into saving the world, or at least leading a save the world club. I was busy dealing with the onset of puberty and the sudden loss of my popularity amongst my classmates. It surprises me to think of it now, realizing that I was kind of an ambitious little kid. I don't consider myself to be a particularly ambitious adult, and I wonder what happened. It makes me a little sad to think of that girl unabashedly hugging a birch, even while her big brother laughed at her. I know she's got to be still inside me somewhere, and I think maybe I should let her out more often. Not necessarily to embrace fauna, but to go after big dreams and do good things without realizing they might also be somewhat unrealistic and/or idiotic.

I just won't let my brother take pictures this time.

Note: Knocker - do you still have that picture? I would like a copy, please. It will be destroyed treasured forever.