THIS LEAF
★★★★★ (2 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing this leaf.
There is this leaf I found on my porch. I think it was a maple leaf but I’m not familiar enough with leaf shapes to be able to identify it. It might have been a pine leaf. It was a pretty normal leaf as leaves go, except that its origins were a complete mystery.
It had appeared one day and I had no idea where it came from. I couldn’t spot any leaves missing from any of the trees in my yard, and I looked at all the branches very carefully. Then I looked at all of them again just to make sure. I did spot a leaf missing from a tree across the street, but then I noticed it was just on the ground beneath the tree.
I wondered if the leaf had been left on my porch as a message of some kind. Maybe a warning, like someone wanted me to “leaf” the neighborhood. It’s hard to take a threat seriously when it’s also a pun, but I was still a little scared.
It was also possible the mailman dropped it. He always seemed like the kind of guy who would be into leaves. Someone else could have dropped it, but who else would have been on my porch? A burglar? Jehova’s Witnesses? Why would either of them have a leaf?
I put up some fliers with a photo of the leaf to try to find the owner (and some answers). I know it sounds silly but I would hate myself thinking someone out there was looking for something precious while I was doing nothing to help them find it. No one replied so I figured whoever it was, if it was anyone, had moved on, either emotionally, or to the afterlife.
The last thing I needed was another leaf, so I grafted it to one of my trees using a piece of tape. Unfortunately because I waited so long, the leaf had died. What a waste of tape that turned out to be.
The leaf really took up a lot of my time and didn’t bring any joy to my life. Only mystery and anxiety. Some people like mystery. Not me.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Yosemite Sam.
