Trampoline Autobiography

Growing up presents painful hardships. These hardships chip away at us during adolescence, carving away false pretenses, developing a greater person—a masterpiece to be unveiled at a later date. A time arrives during childhood when innocence expires, naiveté ceases, and reality hits. Most people, when asked about these trying teenage years, lament about times where they felt this cataclysmic shift, instances of cruelty or even epiphany. But homeschooling sheltered me from many of the school day terrors kids experience on a daily basis, such as the first time an insult permeates the soul on the playground or the last glimpse of mom after being dropped off, still, I was not immune; I did not have to worry about forgetting homework or who to sit

When I was three years old, my parents bought my brother and I a trampoline. In those days, its netting lacked holes, its mat still possessed startling elasticity, and it had only positive memories associated with it. The neighborhood kids, of all ages, shapes, size, and colors would come over every day to play in our compact backyard on our wooden playset or shiny new trampoline. The trampoline drew in kids like moths to a light, sparking my first friendships. We were so innocent—completely oblivious to the challenges our future selves would endure— playing for as long as our uninhibited hearts desired and our little bodies could

Incessantly, my brother and I begged to take our trampoline with us. We had created two years of treasured memories on it. Some of the fondest being the time we camped out on it during the summer with colorful sleeping bags, sugary snacks, and a portable DVD player showing Toy Story 2, or the time we crammed dozens of water balloons on it, catapulting each colorful orb into the air with a bounce, raining down a storm of giggles—we couldn’t leave it behind and let those memories achromatize. My parents understood our attachment, and I sat in the tower of my playset, watching as the movers packaged the azure trampoline up and loaded it onto their big green truck. Looking back on it my mind floods with nostalgia that occasionally overflows from my tear ducts onto my