This past weekend I helped put together a trampoline for my nephews. Well technically, I watched my brothers-in-law put together a trampoline for my nephews, but I wasn’t entirely useless: my sisters and I spent the time trying to figure out what to get our mom for Mother’s Day. I also helped by doing a sweet flip once the trampoline was all together, just to test it out. My nephews were astonished, and one remarked “I didn’t know old people could do a flip.”
Children really are precious gems, aren’t they? I’m certain I had worse remarks for my mom growing up, which is part of the reason why my mom will receive a Mother’s Day present from me each year without any bickering. But it wasn’t just my mouth that got me in trouble or caused my mom emotional anguish when I was a kid. One summer, such anguish started on the edge of a trampoline. It was a trampoline down the street, in a backyard overgrown with tall grasses and weeds. My twin sister and I jumped on the trampoline with the kids from next door, a brother and sister about our age. Between games of crack the egg, I decided I would quickly pee off the edge of the trampoline, a task made difficult by my neighbor’s refusal to stop jumping. What made the task even more difficult was his sister’s curiosity about what makes boys, boys. I turned to the side and tried to walk around the circumference of the trampoline away from her, and as a result, a wobbly and wide arc of pee circumscribed the trampoline. As soon as I was finished, the game of crack the egg resumed as if nothing had happened.