Monday, March 1, 2010

jump around, jump around, jump up, jump up, and get down

This past weekend, I was talking with some friends about my fear of children falling. Falling from high places, head injuries, etc. It's my biggest fear when it comes to kids...in fact even with adults. I just can't handle it. I was recounting a terrifying experience I had a couple summers ago involving a trampoline, a sweet little boy, and a terribly frightening head injury...and I wondered...where did trampolines go so wrong?

A lot of childhood memories involve a trampoline. I remember when Doug and Connie got one, I think the first in our family. The girl cousins would have sleepovers outside in the summer. Jumping in our sleeping bags on the tramp, running in circles playing "maneater", falling asleep in separate locations--only to wake up in one pile in the center of the trampoline. The boy cousins would have wrestling matches on the trampoline all the time, with the girls often used as "managers" in their wrestling stories. We would spend hours on that thing.
Later, when our family finally got a trampoline, I got up the courage to try and learn how to flip...I felt so awesome, so free...
Sure people got hurt. some bruises here and there, a deaden tooth (myca), my sister's friend Mo sprained her ankle...but it didn't effect me..
but now...you couldn't pay me to get on a trampoline, and Q will be banned from those, unless a security net is in use and the big kids...the ones that like to bounce the little ones super high or play "crack the egg" are far from said trampoline....because now, trampolines scare the crap out of me. They give me such anxiety.
It's the fear of falling. I get scared of a kid falling of a couch, can you imagine the anxiety of a kid, especially my kid, falling from a high bouncy object...oh heck no!

My poor nerves.

3 comments:

auntiescary said...

I think everybody gets a "thing" - my mom's is choking. "Don't ________, you'll choke." Even now she'll feel compelled to warn us. Just breathe.....you'll be fine.

Kim said...

I sprained my ankle on the trampoline, but that's not too bad. I'm a fan of the in the ground trampolines.

dirty>south said...

i'm personally responsible for: myca's dead tooth, our bellevue neighbor kid's broken arm, and many, many, many, many kids being thrown off. how did we not die on trampolines before they had the blue padding and now the mesh cages?

The best was using the shed next to trampoline as the "top rope".