a little nonsense now and then

Roald Dahl wrote, "A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men."  And who says that there can too much of a good thing?

Things heard in my yard today from the boys:

- "Watch me! Watch me! WatchmewatchwatchmeWATCHME!" x 400
- "Jiminy Cricket woman, just take the picture already!"
- "How's my hair?"

Boy child tells me that he likes to make friends with the rough kids.  Gentle children make him nervous.  He worries about breaking them.  I try not to think about Lennie from Of Mice and Men when he says things like this.  There is an amazing amount of physical energy in these kids of mine and they like to wrestle. I've never seen either one of them back down from a conflict.  As a parent I am both impressed and exhausted.

The blessing and curse of trampoline season is upon us.  It was before eight o'clock this Saturday morning when the neighbor boy knocked on the door, wanting to jump.  We're homeschoolers.  Eight in the morning is still practically the night before.

On the other hand, with all that juvenile energy directed harmlessly into canvas and springs rather onto one another, it's worth falling down this particular hole.

the strange beauty of jumping

Gravity is a quirky master.  Since we have failed to remove the trampoline, I still get to take bazillions of photographs to make what I consider a oddly beautiful yet creepy pictures of suspension, when inertia and gravity play their tricks. 

Here is a few from today, with our young friend over for a visit. 

the short and happy life of our trampoline

I'm not even entirely sure how we ended up with a trampoline.  Last summer there was a truck that arrived with a collection of pipes and mesh.  It is or was - I'm not sure, as possession of it, as I said, is shrouded in mystery - my good buddy Lexi's, but then it ended up in my garage needing safe haven and a few patching repairs.  The trampoline itself is over twenty years old.  Lexi jumped on it as a child.  And now my children jump on it.

As my neighbor said ominously, as he watched The Man put up the trampoline, 'Oh, now you've gone and done it.'  He went on to say that trampolines attract random kids like shit attracts flies.  And, unsurprisingly, he is right.  We have discovered, as thousands of parents have discovered before us, that while the trampoline is great fun, there is a fairly high risk factor for the jumpers. Personally, I believe that risk can be managed successfully, especially if your children value their unbroken bodies and do not act like jackasses. Unfortunately, that can't be said of the neighborhood kids, so the trampoline will have a shorter than expected stay in our backyard this summer. We have a few more days with it - along with some heavy supervision by myself and The Man - and then it will go back into the garage for a spell or find perhaps find a place where it is less likely that I will have to stand by and nag fifty kids to please, damnit, follow the few, simple frickin' rules we've put into place for your own bloody safety. 

Instead of degenerating into a rant about personal responsibility and the inability of kids these days to manage their own risk, I'm just going to sign off and go take some more pictures of the kids jumping while the neighbor kids peek through the fence, looking forlorn, now that they've been forbidden to bounce. Having to limit who gets to jump wasn't a fun decision, but becoming a raving lunatic trying to manage a million kids is even less appealing.