How Six Year Olds Climb a Tree

First, beg and beg your Auntie with a camera to lift you up onto the horizontal part of the tree trunk in her backyard. When the Auntie protests that she’s much, much too short, get on your knees and beg harder. When she turns around to chase after your toddler cousin, run into the toy shed and pull out the tallest thing you can find: a flimsy Plastic basketball hoop. Drag it over to the tree. Try to climb up the basketball hoop.

Next, tip the basketball hoop horizontal onto the ground and climb on top of the base. Yell at your twin sister to bring that pink noodle lying on the snow over to the tree. Try to wrap the styrofoam noodle around the trunk to make a pulley.

Because none of these things seem to be working, take a break. Sleep on it. You might come up with a better solution in the morning, like gathering up your twin sister and your two week younger cousin to create a ladder with a strong stick. (Don’t be alarmed if the Auntie with the camera snaps photographs furiously through the window).

If that doesn’t work, spend 36 more hours begging and pleading your super duper tall uncle to lift you up in the tree so the Auntie with the camera can take that very important picture of you sitting on the horizontal tree trunk.

(I’ve been waiting for a soul such as my niece Miranda exhibits for years. She runs around thinking of new ways for me to take her picture (with a chicken, on the floor, with her elephant, feeding a stuffed tiger, sitting on an anchor . . . ) and I run around taking pictures of her. Ahhhhhh. Lovely. There’s finally someone who doesn’t avoid the camera!