Previously in this series: If Tom Hardy Were Your Boyfriend
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d be outdoorsy, but not in a show-offy way. He’d take you for long walks in the woods behind his parents’ house, and if you forgot to bring a granola bar to snack on, he’d just pick you an apple. He’d thank the apple tree, and you’d be impressed by how much he respects Mother Earth.
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, you’d have trouble keeping your hands out of his beard. “He’s not some hipster,” you’d tell your roommate. “He was [*finger quotes*] ‘lumbersexual’ way before BuzzFeed made it a thing.”
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he would be really proud to introduce you to his friends. “Babe,” he’d say, “meet Tree.” “Wait,” you’d say. “‘Tree’ is an actual, like, tree? I just thought she was just really tall or something.” “Don’t make it weird, okay?” he’d whisper.
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d carve your initials into Tree, memorializing your love for generations to come. “Doesn’t that hurt the –” you’d start to say. “No way, babe, she loves it,” he’d reply.
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d never let things get boring in the bedroom. “You wanna swing from THESE branches, don’t you?” you’d say (because he asked you to). “Mmmmm, yeah,” he’d say. “Shake those leaves for me.”
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d always be able to afford little surprises despite never holding a job for very long. “M’lady,” he’d say, sneaking up from behind to clasp an apple-shaped pendant around your neck.
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d be on board the second you suggest moving in together — he wouldn’t even notice how nervous you are. “I know there are some cute one-bedrooms downtown,” you’d say, but he would dismiss the whole idea of a starter apartment. “We’ll just build a house,” he would decide. “I’ll handle it.”
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d tell you that building your new home was his second-greatest accomplishment (after landing you, of course). “Wow,” you’d say, “a real log cabin. Did the HOA sign off on this?”
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, you wouldn’t love the way your disagreements always seemed to devolve into name-calling. “Okay, Old Stump!” he’d huff. “That was totally uncalled-for,” you’d reply.
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d be the one with the “Enchanted Forest Wedding” Pinterest board.
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d never lose his thirst for adventure, even after you’d been together awhile, even if you eventually got married and were trying to put two kids through nature-based alternative private school. “Let’s buy a BOAT,” he’d say to you one day.
If The Boy from The Giving Tree were your ex-boyfriend, nobody would believe you when you told them what happened. “He just LEFT? In a homemade CANOE?” they’d demand, and you’d shrug. You would use the profits from his “charmingly rustic hideaway” to upgrade to stainless-steel EVERYTHING in your new place.
Tags: beauty, books, meghann gordon, relationships, shel silverstein, the giving tree
Words cannot describe how grateful I am that this wasn’t ‘if the little boy from Mallory’s horrific version of the Giving Tree were your boyfriend’. Because this was lovely, and that would not have been.
Somehow I find this piece horrific? Maybe I am alone in that?
(It is of course both excellent and horrific.)
The original book is horrific enough, really. (One of my most-hated children’s books, second only perhaps to “I Love You Forever”).
That book is THE WORST. He takes everything, *everything* she has to give, and she keeps taking him back/giving more. It’s horrible.
In my mind of always called this book, The Taking Boy. He is the worst. If he were your boyfriend you’d come home one day to YOUR house and all of your things would be gone. And then he’d text you 6 months later wanting to get back together.
Too real. Too. Real.
YES. I have such seething hatred for this book.
I heard “M’lady” and my entire body just
in instinctive neckbeard revulsion.
Same. Also most of it made me try to escape through my shoulderblades.
God, that poor tree.
If that boy were your boyfriend, he’d drain your bank account, max out your credit cards, crash your car, and sleep with your sister.
And then ask you for a loan.
And then tell you that you have ‘a lot of unresolved tension, I can see you holding it in your shoulders. Here give me your hand I’ll give you a reiki reflexology massage. Woah ok no need to be like THAT I was trying to HELP I guess SOME OF US prefer to hold on to UNREASONABLE ANGER”
The final touch of “upgrade to stainless steel EVERYTHING’ is perfect and lovely and bravo. 🙂
(walking the ‘sweet and creepy’ line and I love it.)
I can’t identify what this one is making me feel. Pleasure? Sadness? It’s like an elephant is sitting on my chest… but in a nice way?
It feels like dodging a bullet but just barely.
Well, hell, now I wish I’d thought of an Enchanted Forest wedding theme. (We are talking Patricia C. Wrede, right??)
YESSSS the best idea. Shiny dragon-scale-like dresses! Cherries jubilee! A witch officiating!
This is an awful situation, but very well-written. *full body shiver of revulsion*
Could this also be turned into Children’s Stories Made Horrifying? Or is it already?
Try this. Make sure you’re somewhere comfortable, first, maybe. Get yourself a nice soothing cup of tea.
Oh dear.
I knew what that link was, and yet I read it anyway.
The tree is happy.
I like this version SO MUCH BETTER.
What does that say about me?
I, for one, have dated that boy too many times to count.
I dated him in my late teens and it was THE WORST. *full body shudder*
God I hated that book. A classroom at my Montessori had a special solitary nook in one corner of the class, where only one person could be at a time. Throw pillows and so on. And you couldn’t just go there to crash with a book, only one book was allowed, waiting there alone on the shelf, and it was the damned Giving Tree. Baby’s First Codependency. Read it a thousand times, because I liked the privacy, always thought it was so fucked up.
Oh, I would completely sneak another book inside that book. A comic book would fit nicely! People telling me what to read=bad Montessori, bad!
If the boy from The Giving Tree were your boyfriend, he’d take you to visit his mother and she’d just sit there in the dark.
Seriously, this is the guy whose office used to be his mother’s private home (and/or she sold that home to finance the purchase of said office), and now she just lives in one little room in the very back.
If the boy from the Giving Tree were your boyfriend, you’d have a very comfortable bench-shaped grave marker.
Just to give a partial defense of the book here, or at least my reading of it. The book was never about the boy. The boy is an idiot in the book, as this post shows and the book clearly describes. He takes and takes, always an idiot, always a user. The book is about the tree. The tree, if anything anthropomorphic, is a representation of the difficult lives of those who are used by the assumptions of white male privilege. But I’ve always read the book more about an idea of God, especially in the assumptions at the end of the book. After the last page, it is assumed that the boy will soon die. But the tree will shoot saplings through its stump and all around itself–not children, but clones of itself, part of its original. The tree–who gave a few decades to a boy who showed it love early in the boy’s life–will continue to live for thousands of years in different forms. The sad, lonely boy will die, and tree will offer him a seat on which to rest, as the tree has offered to so many others, but tree is happy, for it will live on and on and on and on.
Apple trees don’t actually do that, though.
(And, if they do, it’s usually from the rootstock, and since most apple trees are grafts….)
Not entirely unrelated: The Missing Piece… does the round thing learn an important lesson or does he just turn out to be a dick?
This did not disappoint…
I am incredibly relieved to find out that the book is so universally received as off-putting… I always assumed there was something very wrong with me, for crying convulsively instead of being touched by this punch-in-the-stomach-disguised-as-a-book.
Not alone!
Oh but I really wanted the Mallory horrific version of this because that would bring some delightful closure to my feelings of the original book.