I look at genuine bonsai trees in a catalog sometimes, but every time I do, I feel like I am betraying my fake bonsai, which is an olive sprig with leaves too big to really be called a bonsai. Also, the ones in the book are expensive. Ollie only cost me twenty bucks, and I’ve had him for close to seven years now.

If I’ve had him so long, I wonder if that means I’m ready to care for a real bonsai, or that I should wait and be happy with what I have. Or is Ollie a real bonsai? I looked up on a sight, and it said that the rules for a bonsai to be called real are as follows:

• Natural appearance: It has to resemble a real tree; the hand of the artist should not be perceived in the specimen.

• Beauty: There is no way to gauge beauty. For some artists, there is great beauty in a tree that harmoniously breaks the rules. For others, the supreme beauty is to find a tree that precisely follows those rules. All in all, the tree should be beautiful to the eye that sees it.

• Maturity: The specimen should simulate age. The challenge, then, is to recreate maturity in the tree. Roots, trunk, branches: all the arrangement should look like it were there for decades.

But wait! What if the bonsai believes really hard that it is real? Surely that counts for something.