If a Tree Grows in the Forest, then You'd Better Keep My Dangerous and Awe-inspiring Intellect Away from it, 'Cause that Mother's Gonna Come DOWN!

As you may have already surmised, I'm having a pretty laid-back summer. I'm studying...a lot. Because I'm so busy, I have little time to create drama or observe drama being created. Or so I thought.

A week or so ago, I started to create some pretty serious drama. From my office sliding door, I began to hear the time-worn evidence that my finely-tuned intellect is kicking into high gear. That's right: nature began to implode. In the lushly wooded lot next to my complex, tree after tree after tree has fallen. I regret to confirm that my mind is, again, simply that strong. Each day, I am treated to the gut-wrenching crack-and-crash that mark the falling of once-noble, majestic trees.

How do I know I'm briging them down? Every time I settle in for an extended period of ostensibly quiet study, the same...thing...happens. In my master's program, I wrecked havoc. As I wrote my thesis, I cleared a minor forest. No less than three apartment complexes were built on the areas that were were cut down around my apartment as I studied. When I moved back with my parents, the destruction was more minor, but just as psychically scaring. Though I begged them to wait, one major tree had to come down in the yard and many more lost branches. In the most cacophanous, ear-bleeding way imaginable. See? Even when I don't want it to happen, I am powerless to stop it.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should be punished for my awesome mental power, for the danger I present to society. Then, as I listen to the searing, alternately loud grating and whiny, high-pitched grinding into mulch—seriously, folks, from 8 a.m. to around 4 p.m. (half-hour lunches) every weekday—I think to myself, "I am. I am."