Everybody Needs a Tramp

I now know what all that stimulus money should be spent on - trampolines.  I kid thee not.

We bought our offspring one this summer.  They'd been asking for five years and we kept saying good things come to those who wait and this summer they said but not to those who wait too late. Yeah, Grover Washington, Jr. - they've been listening to the oldies station at night.  Fair enough. So, we ponied up our own version of stimulati trampolinus, which is Latin for "cash for jumpers." 

So now, after we've had our caviar and scotch for dinner, we wait about ten minutes as we don't want to yark in the circle of wonder, and then we remove our shoes for we are entering holy fabric and we slide through a slit in the netting and it's like we've entered Narnia or the Shire or something.  Otherworldly.  

I've gotta tell you, regardless of what happened during the day, a few minutes on a trampoline and you're feeling better or at least you've got a bloody nose.  Being a self-taught philosopher and all, I've a theory about this.  Here goes.  I've noticed that many times our "jumping" is really a glorified "hopping" - we're hopping around, trying to do flips and wrestling jumps off the top rope - everything the manual says not to do.  Anyway, as I "hop" numerous times, unbeknownst to me, the wily silent "e" slides through the slit in the netting and slinks up next to my "hop" and gets in on the fun and the next thing you know my "hop" has become "hope." Yep, good old hope.  I know "love" is the greatest of these, but "hope" is in the top three and some days, days like these, "hope" may just be the one that spurs us to ride into hell for a heavenly cause or helps us make it through the night or suffices for what a fool believes.  Yes, I'm somewhat of a musical philosopher.

Trampohope (nice, eh?) might just be what our country needs right now.  September's a helluva month.  It was a year ago all this recession stuff really got heavy.  Then there's 9.11.  Johnny Cash died in September.  Lord, that's enough right there to make millstones look attractive. But wait, what's that? It's a rhythm, a bouncing, a jumping, a hopping, calling us to abandon our work-casual-flip-flops and squeeze through the netted wardrobe and hop like little children, hop till that glorious silent "e" makes an appearance and transforms us, if only for twenty minutes 'cause then we have to come in and do our homework, yes, be infused with trampohope complete with phrases like Lord, your head is hard and say, do you think this is a rib poking out of my side?  

You come off an experience like that all good and sweaty and your feet are blackened so you muck up the sheets on the bed but all that's worth it to laugh so hard boogers fill your beard and to crash, literally, into folks you love dearly but haven't seen all day and to hop, hop, higher and higher 'cause geese are flying overhead and you think they just might notice your skills and invite you to fly along or at least compliment you and say dude, are you Peter Pan?  And if the geese do ask such a question, the presence of trampohope enables you to say maybe!  Not the hubris-laden yes, we can nor the woe-is-me-Eeyore-shuffle, but something in the middle, the glorious middle - maybe...a word born of one of the greatest - hope.