a trampoline tale

We got our trampoline when I was 8. For Easter. A holiday that usually meant hairbrushes and new underwear for gifts--but Mom somehow scraped up the money and outdid herself that year.

I know that everyone seems to have a trampline now--a big caged in, covered in pads, so safe it's hardly fun trampoline--but when we got ours, it was still 1983, and trampolines were a total jump-so-hard-your-feet-would-touch-the-ground novelty. So much so that kids we didn't know (who probably spotted it in our backyard while swimming in the canal) started to wait for us to leave, then would climb over our back fence and play on it. At least that's the conclusion we drew from the unfamiliar abandonded socks we'd find, and that one cigarette burn.

Even when we would invite friends over to play on the much coveted trampoline, kids started to get their fingers pinched in the springs. And various body parts bent under them when they'd land. And, of course, fall off. Though we weren't quite the "prosecution nation" we are now back then, Mom got wise. She typed up (on a thing called a ty-per-writer) and had copied a batch of JUMP AT YOUR OWN RISK disclaimer forms for kids to sign where they promised to only play with our permission, remove their shoes, and take care of all their broken bones themselves.

Now that our legal bases were covered, the fun really began! Just jumping got boring after about 6 months, and we had to up our thrill level. We invented or were taught all kinds of games: bum wars, add on, poisonous shoes, crack the egg. We learned how to do front flips. Then back ones. We'd jump with the sprinkler running beneath it, which seemed to make it extra bouncy. We'd have sleepovers on it. Our crowning achievement, I think, was discovering that if we pulled the trampoline over to the edge of the house, then had a friend give us a double bounce, we could just grab the edge of the roof and pull ourselves up....then jump back down. It was like having our own personal high dive into a sea of elastic! Jumping on that trampoline seemed to be the one time of the day my brother and I wouldn't fight. We'd just run out there as soon as we got home from school and play. Together. Happily.

As I transitioned into teenagerhood, the trampoline started to lose some of its shiny newness. Other friends got them. Ours now had sewn on repair patches here and there. No one seemed to know any new games and even jumping off the roof didn't seem quite as exciting anymore. It was still good for laying out on to work on my tan though.

I graduated. My mom moved from our neighborhood out to a house on a hill in the country. I went to college. I got married. We had our first baby.

Then...my mom and her husband decided to captain their boat around North America and needed someone to live in their house for six months. Brad and I took her up on the offer. The day after we got moved in, I was playing with baby Z down in the walk out basement, and there--just outside the sliding glass doors--was the old trampoline. Like a proud soldier that had seen a thousand battles, it stood. Dullish gray metal frame holding up that black mat with it's worn spring arms. And all those happy childhood memories came washing over me again. I picked up Baby Z and quickly headed out to it. He had been crawling for just a few weeks and cautiously set out to explore the strange new surface I had placed him on. He loved it! Then I climbed on with him, picked him up, and began to bounce. That's when I learned that, um, just having babies and jumping on trampolines don't really mix.... But, oh, again! The memories!

We have a trampoline at our house now. A unique, inground, two-person sized one that I imagine the original 1988 owners had installed. It was part of the reason I fell in love with this house. You can bet it makes my heart smile to see this.....

and this....

and this....

and this....

And guess what? You'll often find me out there jumping from time to time, too because even my bladder can take a little trampoline fun again! :)