Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy

   When I was a kid, my dad bought a trampoline.  These days, it's not that big of a deal because they are sold in lots of places.  But back then, we were the only family in the neighborhood (and possibly the only family in our whole grade school) with a trampoline.
   Dad bought it at a surplus store.  I loved going there with him.  Most of the stuff was Army surplus, but there were lots of other things there as well, the trampoline being one of them.  We loaded the parts up in the back of a pickup and drove home with no idea how to put it together or even if we really had all the parts.
   We dragged the four sides into the back yard and figured out how to put the frame together.  That was the easy part.  Next came the springs and mat, which at that time was made of interwoven webbing, sewn together at intersections so a person wouldn't fall through.  The first few springs were easy enough to do, attaching them to the frame and then to the mat.  The last ones were the really difficult ones, and we had to use leather gloves to guard against pinching.
   Once it was all together, the fun began!  But my dad had some definite rules.  First and foremost, none of our friends could jump on the trampoline unless an adult was present (this rule was eased once my sister and I demonstrated that we were competent enough to teach others how to be safe on the trampoline).  Also, only one person at a time was allowed on the trampoline at a time (trial and error and some conks on the head between my sister and I brought this rule into being).  Ideally, we needed to have one person on each side (that meant four people plus the jumper), especially if we had a novice jumper.  Falling between the springs was really unpleasant.
   We had the trampoline for many years.  In the summer it was in our back yard, and rules were eased some as more kids in the neighborhood demonstrated their skill levels.  During the winter, my dad had it in the field house at Mt. St. Mary's High School, where he taught and coached.  He used the trampoline as an off-season method to improve the agility of his football players.  I was, as with many of his experiments, the guinea pig as he developed drills.
   For one thing, with a ceiling that was maybe ten feet high and the trampoline mat probably four feet off the floor, you had to jump on your knees.  He invented different drills to do.  One was to bounce and go from knees to belly to butt and to turn around and land facing the opposite direction as he called out how to land and which way to face.  It was a cool ab workout without doing situps or crunches.  Another drill was to be bouncing facing the opposite way and he'd call out, "Ball!"  We'd have to turn in midair, spot, and then catch a football he'd thrown.  The worst, I mean most challenging, was when he'd throw a medicine ball which we had to catch and throw back as soon as possible (hanging onto a medicine ball was potentially painful, so we learned quickly to throw it back quickly).
   I miss that trampoline and those bouncy days.  Maybe some day I'll get a trampoline again.