The assignments which devolve upon a parent of young and growing child are remarkable for their diversity. Some may be instructive, some uplifting and some bordering on the hilarious.
A task which had elements of all three, plus an added fillip of danger, fell my way the other day. It was called, “softening up the pogo stick.” In the end it nearly softened up me.
There are no words to describe the scene when one’s driveway is filled with seven or eight children, each jouncing vigorously. To me they appear as a flock of earthbound birds, casting themselves heavenward, only to fall back.
As I view them, I’m reminded of the goony birds of Guam. The birds fly along with their heavy wings beating the air in a desperate battle for altitude until they slam head-on into a sand dune and crash back to earth, jarred to their eyeteeth and knocked half senseless by the impact.
Of course, pogo stick riders don’t hit many sand dunes, but they do crash to the pavement rather frequently. In my case, more than frequently.
My daughter Debby did too when she first got her stick. Then within a short time she announced that her difficulty was that the stick hadn’t been ‘softened up’ properly. She said that she had been assured by those who know that a pogo stick needed to by jounced around by a heavy person for a while.
She eyed me as she pronounced the words ‘heavy person.’ Now this reference would irritate some people, her mother for instance, but not me. I have spent most of my life as a ‘too thin’ person, but I put on thirty pounds within the past two years after quitting smoking.
I was flattered, but not enough to be tempted into pogo stick riding. It looked like a way out when I found a warning on the side of the stick announcing the weight limits which it could accommodate. The top limit was several pounds under my present weight.
My daughter dismissed this airily. It didn’t mean much, she indicated. This alarmed me. There are several things I am not raising my children to be, one of them being sign ignorers.
Was this a symptom, I wondered, which if left unchecked would in the fullness of time produce an adult who didn’t believe that the paint was wet, the concrete soft, and the bridge unsafe for vehicular traffic.
Further conversation produced the modified view that a few bounces couldn’t hurt, might help and anyway, gee, daddy, the other fathers are doing it.
A short time later I found myself teetering precariously against the garage door, my gloved hands grasping the metal shaft. (I donned gloves after observing the blisters of other pogo novitiates.)
It cannot be said that I jumped. I attempted a spasmodic movement or two which sent the stick crashing to the driveway with great force. Once I lit on a spot where the car had dropped oil on the concrete and fell headlong.
I was preparing to remount for the fourth time, feeling like a battered dude at a western rodeo when something—pity, I think—moved my daughter to speak.
“Ok, dad,” she said, “I think that’s loose enough.”
Gratefully, I handed the stick back. A moment later she was bouncing down the driveway like a young kangaroo to greet her pogo-enthroned friends. Presently, they all moved off together in a symphony of protesting springs.