Jon Tribble
Oxygen Debt Consider each breath like a loan that you will never attempt to pay off. Without a promissory note, a payment schedule or thirty-year coupon book, without a loan officer to beg for approval, without the persistent collection agency to threaten you with legal action, to send men in the dark of night to drive away in the new truck—oxygen might as well grow on trees.
It does, of course. Grow on trees, that is, like any third-grade science book will tell you, those charts of plants transforming their constant collection of our carbon dioxide into their food, exhaling oxygen, ongoing day and night, and the arrangement seems to work pretty well for us and for the trees.
But there can always be unexpected problems in any business where collection occurs. Broken thumbs, arms, legs, kneecaps. The sort of thing late-night gangster movies with Edward G. Robinson or Jimmy Cagney have. Trees,
you see, they need muscle. Real goons with blackjacks who show up at night and won’t take “no” for an answer. Hell, those types don’t even speak, and trees
don’t either. Maybe that’s what’s needed: a little serious protection for the trees.
I ssue
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