Jump around

Summertime was always my most favorite time of the year. No more school, no classes, no teachers, no assignments, no math, no waking up late and hurrying to catch the bus. Nope, any time that went by was dedicated to fun, to play, to run, to jump, to climb trees, or just move slower and be free. No racing the clock, no worries, no projects to do, no more homework for three glorious months.

It was now time to relax and get down to the business of having a great summer filled of fun, and lots of it. When you grow up on a rural Indian reservation there doesn't seem to be, at first glance, any opportunities for fun. There were no nearby movie theatres, round trampolines, roller rinks, swimming pools, games rooms, lasertron, or computers with Halo, World of Warcraft, or even Gameboys. No, back in the old days we had to use our own imaginations and our brains to manufacture fun to get us through the three months allocated to the good times.

Instead of ready made games and toys, we had miles and miles of woods to play in. These woods were filled with creeks, ponds, swamps, bushes, trees, frogs, snakes, and bugs. There was the spring, the ridge, the reservoir, the playground at the school and a whole neighborhood filled with friends, who were for the most part cousins. The brainpower that we all harnessed to find something fun to each day was unfathomable.

Out in the back of our house was my dad's garage. A two-story barn that seemed like a behemoth to me back then. There was a set of stairs on the backside of the barn leading up to a second story, as well as a built in ladder inside the garage that led to a rectangular opening in the floor. Although it would probably be the easiest for anyone to go outside and walk up the stairs to get up into the garage, my preferred method was to climb the ladder and then hoist myself up through the opening. In those days I was a light thinner then i am now so it was easy for me then, though to accomplish this feat it required a large dollop of balance, grit and some fortitude.

During the summer of 1972 someone either got new mattresses in our neighborhood or just had no use for a large stack of mattresses and box springs. How these old mattresses ended up at our house or more specifically directly under the second story landing of the garage/barn is a mystery to me. But someone got the brilliant idea that those mattresses would make a great landing pad if someone were either brave or stupid enough to jump from the landing onto them, perhaps executing a few flips on the way down. There were quite a number of us who intended to do just exactly that. There was a line up every day for a few weeks as all of the kids took turns jumping off the ledge onto the mattresses below. With each new day came even more wonderful feats of aerial acrobatics as we each tried to outdo the other with our rendition of chief acrobat. The mattresses somehow held out for a number of weeks that summer. In between rain storms we had to take a break to let them dry out before we resumed our joyous jumping.

One especially sultry summer day, I stood on the rail of the landing, already mentally rehearsing my double flip and full layout that i was about to perform. In my minds eye I could see myself and thought "I should turn around and jump off backwards." As "they" say we become that which we think about or that thinking, brings about belief, which brings about action , so it was that day. I turned around and faced inwards toward the barn, practiced my jump again mentally, and must have moved ever so slightly before I launched myself into the air and began my flip. I felt/knew it immediately, I wasn't in the right position. I came down hard, really hard on the ground next to the mattresses. Iheard this funny sound like HUMMFFFTT as i hit the ground, not understanding where the noise came from, me as my lungs deflated. As i lay there next to the mattresses, looking up into the clear blue sky, and into the faces of my siblings and cousins astonished faces the only thing that came to mind was "who moved the mattress."

I fought hard to breath, not to catch my breath but to breathe, the wind had been so thoroughly knocked out of me as I smacked the hard packed earth with my little, skinny, wiry 12 year old body. The only thing I was able to do was lay still for a minute or two, but finally I sat up quickly with a large rush of air. Everyone then started to laugh so hard, i think mostly out of relief it seemed because i was not dead or paralyzed. Then again i think it had something to do with that kind of slapstick comedy like the 3 Stooges, when someone gets whacked it's all you can do not to laugh. The comedy of youth.

The mattress jumps did last too much longer after that, not because my mother had heard about my little "accident" but because the coils in the mattress finally started to unravel and stick up though the mattress in random spots. No one wanted to get a coil jabbed in their back or their backside. So that ended that, no more jumping on the bed. It was time to think of some other ways to have fun without hurting ourselves too much.