The Trampoline is dead.

He will remain nameless, the evil person who broke the trampoline. We're just glad he wasn't doing a backflip. His legs got scraped up a bit, Becky put gauze on his leg with purple duct tape.

The folder this picture came from is soooooooo funny. Boy number #1 is up in the air, then down on the trampoline. Boy #2 is up in the air, then down on the ground. Becky was taking the pictures.

We've had this trampoline since 2000, at least.

Our next door neighbor on the base, who was also named Becky but was in middle school when I was in 2nd grade, broke her ankle jumping on a trampoline with a bunch of friends, so the official rule at this house was "NO TRAMPOLINES".

Then there was a divorce and Daddy Dearest moved out.

So it's a weekend in the fall or late summer, and we're on a nice family walk, just the three of us.

Well, someone down the street was having a yard sale and one of the things for sale was a trampoline. For $25!

The mother said her boys had outgrown it, after doing many stupid things on it, like ride their bikes across it. (There were bike treads on it when we got it.) One of the boys helped us set it up, and later on, his mother worked at the same law office where my mom's lawyer works, but not for him.

Anyways, this thing has always been a lot of fun.

It once flew across the yard on a stormy tornado-siren night. It hit the fence and I think damaged it. (The previous neighbor had a privacy fence erected along the standing chain-link because his two pure-bred Retrievers barked too much at Dixie, and vice versa. Before they eventually moved, the three dogs worked together to dig a hole underneath the fence, because they wanted to play. Luckily, I found out about it along with the neighbor's daughter before her dad did, because he hated Dixie, and we had to block it with cinder blocks. It's still there.)

Monday night, Mom and I had a picnic up there, just Subway sandwiches and begging dogs, but god, what simple fun it provided. Jumping was always fun, but so was laying up there, staring at the sky, be it the night sky or the day sky.

We've slept on this thing on nice summer nights. My friend Jessie and I slept out there, burrowed into many blankets the night before my birthday. When Becky and Natasha slept up there one sumer night, I couldn't find Mikey in the backyard, he was gone. No, there was the little apricot head sitting among his wimmens.

One of the best games we used to play was so stupid and so dangerous, naturally. One of us would lay down on our stomach and hold onto the outer ring. Then the other two girls would jump, bouncing me or Becky or Hollie or Melissa around like crazy.

The trampoline legs had a sticker saying no more than one person at a time.

We used to do that when someone was flipping, but that evolved into sitting or standing on the side.

The boy who broke it? Robert. The boy who didn't? Jonathan.

They were just 2 of the many people of both genders of all ages to jump on this thing. For most of my 9 year old cousin's life, the trampoline has been there and every time she comes over, she has to jump.

I'm out of things to say, so I'm just going to post some pictures. Snow on the trampoline was always an amazing sight. And yes, that's me in the last two.









Frankly, we're surprised it lasted so long.