At a work function, Brad, our resident brown-noser and office know-it-all, told our general manager that Earth harbors more trees than there are stars in the Milky Way. “Look it up,” he said so that one of us would have to admit he was right. “How do they know how many trees there are?” I asked. No one heard me, so I imagined a guy named Johnny, Johnny Tree Counter. It was Johnny’s job to count all the trees on the planet and then compare his number with the astronomer whose job it was to count the number of stars in the sky. Why, you might be wondering? For science. So that people could attend parties or work functions and repeat the numbers and reassure themselves that things weren’t so bad. How could they be when there are so many trees? Earth: 1. The rest of the universe: 0. Anyway, Johnny started counting in his backyard. One, two, three. Then he moved to his neighbor’s backyard and counted the trees there. Then their neighbor’s backyard and so on and so on. “Great insight, Brad,” our GM said, shaking Brad’s hand like he’d forgotten about the vast emptiness of space between stars, about all that scary darkness. Within that vastness, I thought about how people cut down and plant trees every day. I thought about how maybe a recount was due, about changing my name to Johnny. Staring at the fluorescent lights, I wondered, not about pointless shit like Brad, but about how many times I could pretend to miscount and not get fired, about how many times—one, two, three, one, two, three—I could start over. Then it was five o’clock, and I drove home to count the trees and whatever else was growing in my backyard.
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