Enjoy this moment for this moment is your life.

Childhood Memory # 3

Three Ringed Circus
I was going to dedicate this post to memories of our trampoline, but when I started to remember things about our trampoline, it made me think of a few other things we used to do for fun in our back yard. We didn't actually have a circus in our back yard, but this title seemed to fit considering some of things we did for fun back there.

Ring #1: The Trampoline
We were the first kids in our neighborhood to get a trampoline. We had kids from who knows where lined up around that thing waiting for a turn to get on it. There were three rules, no shoes, only three kids on at a time, and you had to have a signed permission slip. My mom had a whole cupboard full of signed permission slips, and I remember being really annoyed that I had to wait my turn to jump on my own trampoline. Just a funny side note: one of my best friend’s mom would not sign a permission slip, she thought trampolines were too dangerous. So, when the rest of us wanted to jump on the trampoline, we would haul out my moms small exercise trampoline, and she would pretend like she was having fun jumping on it, while the rest of us had real fun on the big trampoline. After the excitement died down and other people started getting trampolines, we finally had it to ourselves. We figured out some really fun games to play. We of course played the usual crack the egg and dodge ball, but we had a special trampoline that led us to invent some unique games that other people couldn’t play. Our trampoline was round and stitched together in three pieces leading to some nasty trampoline burns, but the lines it created in our tramp made for some fun games. Here is a picture of our “tramp” with its unique stitching.

One game was called “sharks”, the shark would be in the middle section and the two outer sections were safe and we would jump across the middle section trying not to get touched by the shark. One of the best things we would do on our tramp was put the sprinkler underneath it to cool ourselves off in the summer. We had railroad tracks that ran behind our pasture; there was a freight train that ran those tracks everyday. Whenever we would hear the train coming, we would stop whatever we were doing, even if we were inside, and go on the trampoline and jump the “snake” as we called it. I don’t know how or why this started and why we thought it was so fun. We also had many slumber parties on the trampoline. We lived out in the country, so you could see the stars really well. I loved to look up at the night sky. We saw many shooting stars, one so close that it had a rainbow tail behind it. We would watch satellites zoom by, and try to find constellations, and even made up a few of our own. There is just something about stars that make you think about God, and I spent many nights falling asleep trying to take it all in.

Ring #2 Stilts

The next act in our circus was stilts. I forgot to mention this invention in my last memory, but my dad made us several sets of stilts. I don’t have any pictures of them, but I found this funny Norman Rockwell picture that looks a lot like the stilts my dad made:

The smallest of the set of stilts was just a foot of the ground, then there were several more sets that got increasingly bigger, until the tallest that was about six feet off the ground. I remember watching my older brother walk on the tallest set, and wish I was brave enough to do it. So, I started with the smallest set, and when I got comfortable, I moved to a taller set, until I finally got brave enough to try the tallest set. They were tricky because you had to balance them up against the trampoline to get started, then climb up on them, and finally hold your breath as you took your first step. I was always afraid of falling back down onto the bars of our trampoline. The first 20 tries were pretty unsuccessful, just a couple shaky steps before letting go and jumping down. After a lot of practice, I was finally able to make it across the yard, and then able to walk circles around the yard. I still haven’t a clue what prompted my dad to make those things, but they sure were fun, and I bet not many people can include stilt walking in their resume.

Ring # 3 Barrel Walking
To complete our little backyard circus, we happened to have a couple fifty-five gallon metal drums in our backyard, every once and awhile we would tip them over and try to balance on them. Pretty soon we figured out you could walk on them, and make them roll. We would have contests to see who could get the farthest without falling. We also would try walking two at a time. That always ended in giggling and falling after only a few feet. Whenever we did our barrel rolling tricks, I thought of my great grandpa John Thomas Thornton he had a traveling skating exhibition. He was a professional roller skater (must be where I get my moves) and he had an act he did on a barrel while on his skates, and another act where he roller skated on stilts (Maybe this is where the my dad’s stilt idea came from). I included a picture of him just for fun.

My Great Grandpa John Thomas Thornton posing for some pictures in his skates.