It’s true that teenagers often think they know best, even when they have little-to-no real world experience at all.
It’s also true that adults – especially older ones – sometimes think they know best (even when they don’t).
OP was helping his grandmother out on her property over the summer, even though he wasn’t particularly qualified.
When I was a teenager, I spent my summers visiting my mom on one side of the country, and every other year her mom, my Grammy, on the other side of the country. Grammy usually had some project that needed doing, like cleaning gutters, fixing a fence, things like that.
This story is from when she wanted some trees chopped down.
Volunteer trees, the kind that grow tall and fast, but not thick. Easily handled with a hack saw and/or hatchet if one knows what they are doing. As will become apparent, I was not qualified for that description.
They were trying to work out a problem on their own when grandma came out to show them how it’s done.
Grammy hired a neighborhood teen to help out, and the two of us tackled the first, and smallest, of the three trees. This was when I learned that I was the most qualified of the two of us, so I was in charge of planning.
Shockingly, the first tree went smoothly, and we learned how well we worked together.
Second tree, no problems, we’re feeling like we have a handle on things.
We get to the third tree, and just like we did before, we tied a rope towards the top of the tree, tied it off to an old stump to guide the tree (or prevent an accident), and got to work chopping into the trunk of the tree.
We realized we had a problem when the rope went tight.
Backing off to assess the situation, we were a little baffled how the tree started falling the way it did, but accepted that, if not for the rope, we would have dropped this tree onto the nearby fence and Grammy’s truck just beyond it.
As we were discussing how to get the tree to fall the direction we wanted, Grammy came out to see what the hold up was.
We get as far as pointing out the rope when she utters the line.
Turns out, they knew better this time.
“Oh, I see the problem! You used the wrong type of knot! You needed a slipknot so you could tighten it up as you went!”
“No, that’s not the problem. The problem is…”
“Here, undo that knot, I’ll show you how to tie a proper knot.”
Nothing we could say could dislodge that idea that we just needed a ‘proper knot’. So, confirming that what happened next was directly Grammy’s fault, we undid the knot.
The knot that was holding up a whole tree.
Grammy was halfway into the first step of whatever knot she wanted us to tie before she realized why we weren’t listening to her.
All three of us watched this tree fall, nice and slow, onto the fence. With a mighty crack, the trunk separated from the stump, and the tree continued tipping directly onto the roof of Grammy’s truck.
Silence.
Then, finally realizing what we had tried to tell her, Grammy lets out a hearty laugh.
“Ok, I was wrong. Now finish the job and get the tree off my car.”
Does Reddit think they should have tried harder? Let’s hear them out!
This persons says we can learn something from her, even if she was wrong.
They say there’s a reason professional tree-trimmers exist.
People were here for this wholesome story.
Trees are almost always heavier than they look.
It’s nice when people have a good enough sense of humor to laugh at their mistakes.
Lots of times, that comes with age, too.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parent’s 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.