Conversation turned to trampolines in The Club the other day, partly because Lancey has just gotten his clan one.
Not a trampoline the likes of which we had back in the day mind, no this is one of those can’t hurt you ever, can’t have fun jobs. Which got to us discussing just how those death traps on legs from days gone by, provided us kids with a rite of passage into later life, something Lancey’s spawn will now miss out on thanks to the Big Limp Dick Safety Brigade.
Who didn’t learn a valuable lesson from getting their nuts crunched and pinched when falling through the springs on a trampoline? Not to mention failed flips, mistimed landings from nearby structures or launches into pools that came up short.
Every kid had at least one incident of being catapulted off the damn thing by an older kid bouncing twice as high as every other bugger. That usually ended in a mistimed attempted landing on the frame from a great height, thus crunching the gnads and grazing the ankle / shin / thigh when landing half in the springs and half off the frame.
If you were really lucky you finished that particular artistic move with a face plant on the grass below. I can still hear the laughter now…
Who didn’t find out the hard way that laying underneath it whilst your older brother depth charged the hell out of the thing in a stress test that was never tried in the factory because it was presumed that such a load would ever be heaped upon it and even if so, who would be silly enough to sit under it if it was?
Well we were of course and a couple of those in the head and back learned us didn’t it.
What about the valuable lesson we were all given on the importance of maintaining balance whilst sitting in the corner awaiting your turn only to fall forward or worse, backwards, off the thing when some bugger got a little eager and upset the structural balance by jumping in early, making the ‘no more than two’ rule Mum always dropped on us a very valid point.
I lost count how many times I got ejected by clothesline, flying drop kick or throw to the imaginary ropes that failed to stop me from the copious Royal Rumbles we ran on ours. Dodgeball was another big favourite at our house, until some hard out fired the thing at point blank range whilst you were mid flight and took your legs clean out from under you. Many an emerging facial pube was removed in the resulting face to spring action that inevitably led to.
Ours had a particular design flaw too that meant if you bounced hard enough, on just the right angle, the leg would pop out from the frames which lead to a monumental collapse of epic proportions. I can still see my sister hurtling off it at an acute angle after just such a structural fuck up.
Not that some of us have stopped learning from the humble trampoline. Bruiser has lost two in as many years in a perfect example on how impossible it is to anchor the bastards when you live high above the common folk in the valley below.
One of them very nearly made it down there too only to be swallowed the bush on the hillside directly below his place mid flight. It will be found one day like a forgotten plane wreck leading those who located it to question “How the fuck did this get here?”
The other came to rest through the rear window of the Audi owned by some Asians down the road. Their response to that was to chain the bent and broken frame in their front yard till someone claimed it. Of course that didn’t really pan out because we all know how Asians are with answering their door when knocked on; they don’t. How the hell did they think that was going to work?!
So Lancey’s lot will experience none of this and miss out on some of life’s cruellest, but essential lessons. They will instead be bored with it after about five minutes and move back indoors to the gaming consoles.
No one ever got a gaming console to the balls.
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