boom.
So today, the oldest tree on our campus was struck by lightening. I actually got to witness it and, wow, was it glorious. I didn't even see a bolt, just a shocking silvery-white pop in the upper left corner of my windshield, accompanied by the loudest crack/boom/kapow I've ever heard. At least half of the tree exploded, sending huge splinters and branches everywhere. No one was hurt and no cars were hit, which is a miracle all in itself.
This was all anyone could talk about for the rest of the day. I come from a small town where we've had exactly one media-reported crime in the last decade, so I'm familiar with the unwarranted hullabaloo that surrounds unique happenings. This was all over social media. Everyone wanted to see what happened to the tree and did it really get struck by lightening? I, for once, had a cool story to share about seeing the killing itself, while I sat alone in my car waiting for the torrential rain to blow over some.
Then, probably because half a tree is pretty dangerous standing all by its lonesome in the open lawn, the rest of the tree was felled, hacked and rotted before the day was done. We joked earlier this evening at my job at the school newspaper that we should do a breaking news piece on the lightening strike. It would've been funny, and I'm not saying it wouldn't have been.
But less than twenty-four hours previously, an anonymously authored email was sent to some of the student body and our board of trustees, slandering the reputation of one beloved faculty member and others who are related to the college in a way that is unbeknownst to the general student population. Within this day period, as with many other scandals that have struck this campus since, well, probably always, there's a sense of stalling. It's not quite foreboding; we've seen this movie before, we know the worst in yet to come in some way. It's like the campus is holding its breath while we wait for the implications to set it, like we're playing hide and seek and maybe if we stay still enough and don't say a single word, the seeker will just give up and leave us alone. We don't want any trouble here.
And then the tree exploded, and we all let out the air we'd been holding with a quick scream that was definitely just about the phenomenon of lightening. The tree was so old, so historic. We didn't even notice its existence until its absence, and even then, some pictures would help the memory. Let's talk about that, please.
