A Bounce in My Step – Soon

I’ve heard it said that “life is what happens while you’re making plans.”

As mentioned in a previous blog, I’ve received my new adult pogo stick, helmet, bicycle pump, and ankle braces.  I’ve taken everything out of their boxes. My daughter told me last week that I bought a pogo stick for her when she was a child, and while I’d like to believe that I remember everything accurately, I didn’t remember that.

When my pogo stick popped out of the cardboard box, there was a page of instructions attached proclaiming in large bold letters:  READ ME!  That seemed like a good idea but . . . well, I was indisposed on Sunday and didn’t get around to “reading me” until Monday afternoon – that is now.  The first instruction is:

“We highly HIGHLY recommend giving this Pogo 101 tutorial a watch.  It’ll take 5 minutes of time but save you tons of frustration when learning.”

I confess that I hate to read instructions.  I believe that the operation of anything should be intuitive and that I’m smart enough to figure it out without reading the instructions.  Heck, as I remember, I learned to ride a bicycle pretty quickly with no instructions other than my father’s plaintive, “Balance!”  Also, I don’t particularly like to watch short videos unless they’re funny.  Sprite showed me a video this morning of a dog doing yoga.  The dog was better than I am at yoga, and the video was funny.

The good news is that I haven’t harmed myself yet on my pogo stick.  The bad news is I haven’t yet tried it.  Perhaps my conscious mind has been saying, “go for it,” and my unconscious is saying, “no – this could be dangerous.”  Thanks Freud.  The trouble with my unconscious is that the only way I can guess what messages it is sending to me is to watch what I actually do.  Kind of like politicians – you have to watch what they actually do (not what they say) to find out what their unconscious mind is really thinking.

Well, I am going to bounce on my pogo stick.  This coming week.  I promise.  I’ve even picked out a slab of concrete in front of my house for the experiment.  I hope the tutorial doesn’t insist that I go to the park.  Exercise belongs at home, where you don’t have to drive and can take a quick shower and nap afterward.

In the immortal words of The Fifth Dimension, – words I think I first read in Superman comics (or was it Captain Marvel), “Up, up and away!”

In case you’re worried, although my new pogo stick can bounce more than ten feet high, I asked the manufacturer to make sure mine bounces to only four or five feet.  I’m sure that will be more than enough.

I’ll confess, I’m reminded of how I felt in grade school when I was instructed to take a turn at the high jump.  I would run up to the bar, and stop.  Repeatedly.

But the run up is over.  Next week you’ll see a photo of me on a pogo stick with a bounce in my step.

Alan