What's Wrong With This Fence?

The Hideout

The lot on the north side of my house is uninhabited. By humans. If you count wildlife then there’s that, including the 346 trees in the back half where we made our hideout. I counted them. They were easy to count because they’re mostly the size of a wrist to the size of a giant’s wrist.

It’s actually 341 if you don’t count the five thickest trees growing from what appears to be one root system/underground trunkball. 

One of these trees hangs one side of the hammock that Amber got me for Christmas. Today, I was daydreaming between chapters of a tree trunk think book about a childhood experience I find myself thinking about fairly frequently since it happened. It happened when I was about 8 years old.

The Test

I was taking whatever test you take when your mother wants to put you into the “gifted program.” The gifted program is sort of an elite pat on the back that, for many, says “it’s totally fine if you can’t do basic human things like eye contact.”

Can’t remember a single question on the exam except for this one that’s stuck with me like a mole on the neck ever since getting it wrong. The problem was a fence. There was an outlined drawing in black printed ink on white paper of a lattice style fence. The fence was squaring in something like a home, a garden, or maybe nothing—I don’t remember. And the question was “What is wrong with this fence?”

Please believe me when I tell you I scanned, sniffed, and scrutinized every centimeter of this picture for a complete child's eternity. The eternity that's never fun unless you're flush with curiosity and usually just the one that comes from the moment you do something bad to the moment you're found out. But I'm sure I made every professional in the room uncomfortable trying to make sure that this question wouldn't stump me. Not a picture question. That's child's play.

At some point before the exam or during this question I was told some questions might not have a correct answer. I wasn't falling for that. But I did eventually concede that I couldn't figure it out in the limited time reserved for this paid examination. This was after I counted every row, put my nose to the page looking for printed line imperfections, and gauging the accuracy of the proportions by sight. Pretty sure I asked for a ruler.

"I don't know."

At some point before I left and maybe right after I was forced to give up, I asked what the answer to the question was.

"The fence didn't have a gate."

Can't describe the feeling I had. It had to have been defeat and betrayal. But now, as a confident adult that's more self aware than his former self, I know how I feel about it now.

Counting Trees

I played outside every day growing up. I nearly died on adventures probably 200 times a year. In fact, I have made it a conscious part of my career to make room for playing outside every day since realizing my true happiness in the last year or so. I played manhunt, baseball, basketball, and anything else that someone made the mistake of introducing me to. A bunch of games and activities that involved going over fences. Mostly neighbor's fences. Which were generally locked from the outside. Or had a gate on it inconveniently place at the front of the yard where only adults would find use for one. I never used a fucking gate on a fence. If I did, it was a gate that no one ever closed because we walked through it about 51,000 times every day by a basketball to football team's worth of neighborhood kids. Even when I got older and was a little more into mischief, I wasn't knocking on front doors and politely asking to use the gate on the fence I was trying to jump when the neighbors or police or Citizens Observation Patrol were chasing us. Do you know how many garden fences I can just lift a leg over? Do you know how many gates look exactly like just another part of the fence from the outside?

Fences don't need gates. It's a feature or a convenience. The only animal I've ever seen use a gate besides a human is a dog on the internet. I was defeated by some garbage made-up "need-to-have," like "guest rooms" and "clothing."

Now that I'm the privileged white man that gets to start making rules, I think about how this rumination has shaped my seemingly haphazard behavior over the first 15 years of my adult life. I didn't really count the trees, I just guessed because it didn't really matter.