The Giving Tree 2025

The Giving Tree- Shel Silverstein’s most well-known children’s book. The Giving Tree is the tale of a selfless tree who provides an abundance of food, materials, and unconditional support to a boy-turned-man who simply takes, never once stopping to thank the tree for its generosity. I now present to you The Giving Tree 2025, a modern Clemensteinian take on a Silversteinian classic:

Somewhere in suburban America there lived a middle-class family with two parents and a single child: an average, cisgender white boy. The family lived in a modest ranch style home with a fenced in backyard. In that backyard stood a lone tree. Although the parents were aware of the trees existence, the boy was too preoccupied with screens to ever notice it. One day, after being scolded by his parents for calling someone the f word in a Call of Duty lobby, the boy was sent to play outside in the backyard. He was only allowed to bring one device with him, per his authoritarian parents’ commands. After much deliberation, he chose the IPad. With his face glued to the screen, he descended the porch steps and walked out onto the grass. He ambled across the lawn until SMACK! he collided face first with the lone tree in the corner of the yard. “Since when did we have a tree?” He thought to himself, as he rubbed his sore nose and then angrily smacked the trunk with his open palm. Unlike the boy, the tree was not upset. Instead of fighting back, the tree dropped a bright red apple next to the boy’s feet. The boy looked at the apple, but decided he had better food inside, like pop tarts and half of a KFC famous bowl, so he just left it there. He spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting next to the tree, scrolling mindlessly through highly insensitive Instagram memes about George Floyd.

Many years passed, and the boy was now a teenager. Though the tree still looked the same as it did when the boy was younger, the boy had now grown into a young man. He had some hair on his upper lip, and just last night he was surprised to see one small curl rising out of his mons pubis. His parents were still getting on his case about his gaming habits. Though they had less authority over him than they used to, he was still living in their home, and so he had to abide by their rules. One of those rules was that if he used a racial slur on Fortnite, he had to take a half hour break from the game and go sit outside to think over his poor word choice. His parents told him to bring a book outside with him, but he knew his friends would give him tons of crap if they caught wind that he was reading outside of school. So, he snuck his phone out with him. His friend Kyle had given him a tin of blue raspberry nicotine pouches at school on Friday, and he stuffed one in his upper lip before heading into the backyard. It was a hot day, and the sun stood high in the center of the sky, beating down on him. He walked over to the tree and noticed that the branches shifted as he approached. The tree seemed to have sensed his arrival, and was now offering him a patch of shade. The boy slumped down, his back to the trunk, and used the sun-shield to get himself a better view of the PornHub shorts that he was scrolling through. He watched the lewd 30-second clips with a glazed-over look in his eyes, not a hint of arousal in his nether regions. In fact, the only way he could feel anything these days was by stuffing in four nicotine pouches—two in the top lip, two in the bottom—and watching 10k quality, 360-degree immersive porn on his VR headset. If the tree could kill itself, now would be a good time.

Many years passed, and the teenager, who was once the boy, was now a man. He had moved out of his house to go to college, and had gone immediately from graduation to working as an investment banker in New York City. He was back at his house, visiting his family for the Fourth of July holiday. After getting into a heated debate with his parents about how they are idiots for not converting the entirety of their retirement funds into Dogecoin, he headed out into the backyard to cool off. He fielded a phone call from a coworker, Dave, who was asking him if they should go all-in on a futures bet for the Dodger’s Julio Urías to win cy-young, since his odds would be juiced now that he’d been suspended for half the season for his (second!) domestic violence case. Halfway through the call, the boy-turned teenager-turned man’s phone stopped working. He wanted to get the SIM card out, but had nothing to poke it out with. Just then, a little pine needle floated down from the tree and landed on his phone screen. He looked at the tree mysteriously and then used the needle to pop out his SIM card. He blew on the card, and then stuck it back into his phone. His screen turned back on, and he immediately opened X to retweet a threat furthering the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory. The tree’s branches drooped, as if to sigh.

Many years passed, and the boy, who was then a teenager, who was then a finance bro, was now an old man. He was visiting his childhood home to see what had become of it after all these years. He knocked on the door, and a young Hispanic father opened it and asked him what he wanted. He tried to hide his disgust, but he couldn’t help the scowl on his face as he considered this profound desecration of his family’s longtime domicile. He asked the father if he could just take a look around, since he had very fond memories of growing up there. The father allowed this. After examining the rooms, which, he was shocked and sickened to find out, had been laid with Mexican rugs and Frida Kahlo prints, he went to check out the garage. He had a plan. He would grab a chainsaw, or the most effective cutting tool that they had, and would run out to the backyard to cut down the tree, causing it to crash through the roof of the home. His worst fears about the ‘Great Replacement’ had become reality, and this was the small step he could take towards making America great again. He spotted a chainsaw dangling from a nail on the wall of the garage, and grabbed it quickly. The father shouted at him, “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!? PUT THAT DOWN RIGHT NOW!”. He ignored the demand, and headed out the side door into the backyard. What he saw there was the same yard, except something was missing. The tree was now a stump. It no longer had anything left to give. All the boy-turned teenager-turned finance bro-turned old man ever did was take, and now there was nothing left for him. He dropped the chainsaw and turned to face the father. “Fine, you want my house? You want my country? Well, you can have it.” He said to the father. “What is wrong with you? Is there a family member or facility we can contact to come get you?” The father asked him.

“I just wanted to come see my tree, that’s all”

“That tree died on the exact day that Trump was installed for an eighth consecutive term. As they were wheeling his rapidly decaying orange body (roughly resembling a rotting clementine wearing a blonde wig) and his life-support machine up to the stage, the tree keeled over and died.”

That was the fate of The Giving Tree. The tree could not bear life in a country devoid of kindness, devoid of empathy, and so it returned to the earth from whence it once came, below the soil it had thrust its roots into, underneath the ground it had lived its entire life on top of.