True story.
When I was a kid, my subdivision had this huge pine tree. I mean, it was a beast. And it's where the kids who lived there would all congregate whenever we had a chance. It wasn't some formal decision, it was just an awesome tree that was easy to climb, and had plenty of thick branches to sit on, so we all naturally gravitated towards it. Over the years, we started bringing old backpacks (painted to blend in), and we'd leave them up there full of soda, snacks, and towels to wrap on the branches so we wouldn't get all sticky with sap. It was pretty boss.
My older brother would never climb the tree though. The first time he tried, he slipped and fell, and he was terrified of it ever since. He'd still come to the tree, and he'd yell at us the entire time that we had to help him climb it. So we'd shout back how easy it was, you just put a foot on a branch and then grab another one. We'd even tell him which branches to grab next. He'd never get more than a few branches up before panicking and jumping back out. Then he started yelling at us that we had to help him climb it. Physically pull him up. A few people tried, but every time they did, he'd turn into dead weight and just yank them out of the tree with him.
Over the years, he got madder and madder. He stopped telling us to help him climb up, and started telling us that we needed to climb back down and hang out with him on the ground. He'd go on about how dangerous it was, and how we were going to fall, and how there was no reason to be up in the tree in the first place. One year he even tried to light the tree on fire, but he was.... sub competent.... truth be told, so it ended up just leaving a damp sooty spot near the base of it. He got punished severely and never came to the tree again after that.
As time's worn on, my brother's become more and more of a shut in. He lives in our mom's basement, and he's afraid of everything. He doesn't shower because he's afraid of snakes in the pipes. He doesn't go outside because 'it's unpredictable out there'. He hates me, and my friends, and his old friends, and our parents, and generally everything in life. I've tried to help him out at various points, aiming to talk sense into him or just be a friendly sounding board for how he's feeling, or just getting him to stop being so resentful towards everything. But he actively rejects it. And sometimes he still mentions how he never had any friends growing up because we all 'hid' from him in that tree.
Not sure why this thread is making me think of him.
