Close call

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  This one only needs seventeen:

A tree fell in our yard yesterday.
It barely missed our car.
It demolished our basketball goal.

It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that we are most grateful that the car was spared.  If it looks like the tree fell just to the side of the car, that's exactly what it did.  There was literally no space between the tree and the side of the bumper.  The car did get nicked up a bit, but nothing any more serious than someone opening another car door into its side.  This "branch" that fell is part of a huge Bradford Pear in our yard (the rest of which will be coming down soon, I can assure you), and with its size and dense heavy wood it easily weighs over a thousand pounds.  Six inches more to the right and it would've crushed our little hybrid. 

That's the story this picture tells.  But what I'm even more grateful for is the story this picture doesn’t tell.

About 15-20 minutes before this happened, my eldest son and I were heading out the door to take our dog for a walk.  Our youngest asked me to move the car so he could play basketball.  In a moment of lazy parenting I said no, for no other reason than the keys were upstairs in my bedroom and I didn't want to go get them.  I asked him to join us instead, not sure if he would.  Somewhat surprisingly, he did.

We were getting ready to turn the bend in the road to come home when we heard the horrible "cracking" sound.  I knew it was either a tree in the woods across from us or one in our yard.  Turned out to be the latter.  As I ran up and surveyed the scene, it didn't take long for me to realize that, had I moved the car as my son requested to shoot baskets, he would've been right underneath it when it fell.

We're bummed about the basketball goal, but honestly, it needed to be replaced anyway.  And we're thankful that the car got out of all of this relatively scot-free.  But we're obviously most thankful that my son was walking with me and not shooting baskets. Perhaps I should try to be a lazy parent more often.