Saturday, December 17, 2005

Trampolines and other crazy things we did as kids

My four year old is a bouncer! Not the kind you might be thinking of. She's never stepped foot near a bar at the wee hours of the night, but she has been bouncing around everywhere she goes since she could stand. Tonight she announced to me that she is very careful standing on beds. I told her she should never stand on beds, she will break both her ankles. (I love spreading the lies that my mom told me!) She laughed at me because apparently, she has stood on so many beds that she knows beyond a doubt that I was just pulling her leg!! Truth be told, Em can't stand on a bed without checking out it's bounce quality. Yes, she's taken tumbles off her bed and gladly she has survived them all! To her advantage, also, as she was the first in her preschool gymnastics class to be able to sit/stand on the trampoline, and we don't even own one!

While she was telling me about how fun it is to jump on beds, I was remembering how my best friend growing up had this huge rectangular trampoline in her back yard. I grew up in Fairfield, CT, the child of two teachers, one of whom stayed home with me. My best friend grew up down the street, sort of. She lived in this huge Victorian house, complete with a dumbwaiter, a third floor, a back stairway, both her parents (at that time) and her four older brothers. I practically lived at her house until she moved away. We did crazy things because her mom had been through it all with four boys. What trouble could one little girl and her tiny playmate be?

We would spend hours on this trampoline in the backyard and believe it or not, we survived! This trampoline was the stripped down version of what we see today. There was not one iota of padding on this thing, all the rusty springs were exposed, leaving us open to all kinds of injury and disease. It was typically located on the portion of the yard that sat right in the center of her long windy driveway, meaning it was not 20+ feet of grass surrounding it - more like blacktop! We never, that I can remember, had any adult supervision on this contraption. We jumped to our hearts content, and I mean jumped!! We did flips, somersaults, cartwheels, twisty turny things. You name it (or dare it) and we jumped it on there. Did we ever fall off? Sure we did! We are so lucky, looking back, that neither of us broke our necks.

When the weather was too cold to be outside on the trampoline, we would take our fearless jumping skills up to the third floor. The third floor of this incredible house had it's own bathroom, two of her brother's bedrooms and a huge playroom, where there was a mattress set in the corner that was surrounded by those windows, you know, the spire of the Victorian castle! We would do all our acrobatic moves right there, way up high, with only glass between our fantastic flips and three story drop. What fun we had!!

I could go on and on about all the wonderful memories that house and that family holds for me. The trampoline itself was the one of the best! I've often thought about buying one of those trampoline's for Em. She would love it and I'm sure it would hold many memories for her, but nothing like the unsupervised ones of my past. Life just isn't the same. We'd have to get her the one that looks like a cage, with all the netting and padding necessary so that we aren't accused of child abuse or neglect should there be an accident. We would need a much larger yard in order to have the recommended amount of clearance for this beast. I would have to watch each and every jump so I would never feel guilty about having missed that ankle-breaking leap. Have we just taken all the fun out of life or what??? I guess for now, the bed will have to suffice. I mean, she's going to jump whether I'm there or not! and it's no bother to her that there is no padding! As she always says to me, "Don't worry, Mom. I don't matter!"

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