Trampolines?

are u me?!

TRAMAPOLINE!

My sibs & I used to sleep on the trampoline at night and, because the thing is stretchy canvas & springs, it always meant waking up in a pile in a big divot in the middle of the trampoline covered in dew.

Someone told me they thought of "trampoline ownership" as a Mormon trait.

We had a pretty complicated game called "Parliamentary Procedure" where we made up new rules for how many times you had to bounce to make up a new rule, and new rules were voted in by bouncing various numbers of times. You also argued your case for how many times you bounced by bouncing.

When I was 17, my neighbors were having a neighborhood barbecue. I remembered when I was very small how I loved when bigger kids & adults would jump on the tramp* with me because it threw off my balance so much & was like crazy space bouncing. So I rounded up all the little preschool age kids & told them I'd jump with them. They were all up on the tramp, and I got on there, and jumped, and instead of landing I went right through the canvas, leave an Abbott-circumference sized hole and a bunch of little shocked kids staring at me.

*we always just called it a tramp

I move to extend the discussion of "Parliamentary Procedure" indefinitely

cracking the fuck up at parliamentary procedure

god yeah it's all about lead-in for the super bounce! though you totally run the risk of collapsing like a noodle if you don't expect it

I LOVE them!!! We used to have some kid slang for adding to someone's bounce vs stealing a bounce via being heavier than them. Can't ... quite... remember what it was....

^yeah same boat

Love tramampoline! Especially love parents & grandparents on tramp, the way they all bounced without jumping. Oh except Dad, he was good at it and could do tricks like somersaults and things.

Our friends had a proper sunken trampoline stretched over a pit, like they had at the trampoline places at the beach, with the thick woven stuff and covered springs. Sooooooo cool.

Oh and a trampoline on it's side made for good tennis practice too

That's ingenious in an "god, why didn't I think of that" way.

Yeah, Mum planted a bunch of trees and shit against our tennis practice wall so we took to the tramp. Was fun to see if you could hit it in the right spot hard enough to flip it back over. Had to do it really freaking hard !

Trampoline is part of my favorite Simpsons episode: Bart's Inner Child.

Homer:Tramapoline! Trampopoline!

Bart: I will never get tired of this!
Lisa: I'm going to have my wedding here!

Homer: Marge, it's the perfect exercise! It'll double the value of our
house, and it was free! Free!

I am frankly terrified of trampolines because of that simpsons episode

have never been on one

Someone told me they thought of "trampoline ownership" as a Mormon trait.

― 17th Century Catholic Spain (Abbbottt), Tuesday, October 26, 2010 7:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i have never heard of this and yet it makes sense, completely

we also called them 'tramps.' they are wonderful.

My mom started drying towels by hanging them off the side of the tramp. She did this even in winter, bringing in these half dry but still kind of frozen terrycloth representations of 90º angles.

After reading this last night I found myself looking up "Mormons and Trampolines" on Google. I laughed out loud.

I have medals and trophies for proper trampolining! But I haven't been on one for about 25 years.

Every kid in our street has one of those stupid round trampolines in a net things which they just bounce on, bounce bounce bounce. I sort of want to go and steal a shot on one and see if I can still do pike somersaults and the like, but there's no room to do anything but bounce up and down. Also, I am lol fattey now unlike when I was 12 and good at this.

Ailsa, wow! do you have any pics of the medals? I think that's SUPER cool.

The trampolines with the nets make me sad. I mean, I understand them, and god knows how many times little ones take a tumble and land on their head, but yeah, you can't do cool trix on them

Sunken pit trampolines OTM!!!! Our youth leaders from church lived on a farm, and had super fun things like trampoline in the barn that was sunk up to floor-level into loose hay for painless (if scratchy) spills. They also had the inner tube from kind of gigantor construction vehicle tire, you could line up like 10 people in a ring around that thing and try to bounce each other off.

I had a friend in high school who came from a mormon family. They had a trampoline and a pogo stick.

Tramapoline ownership is an Orthodox Jewish thing, too, at least in my neighborhood. At least 3/4 of the houses have them, including my neighbors, who also have a lot of young boys in the house and very squeaky trampoline springs.

So, large families desperate to get their rambunctious children outside doing some kind of good, clean activity that's possible in the confines of a suburban yard and keeps the kids in one place for maximum observability by mom, inside. Preferably one that will burn off a lot of energy so they can be allowed back inside.

PHIL D, do you live around B3rkley Rd.? i used to live on that street

Ailsa, wow! do you have any pics of the medals? I think that's SUPER cool

Not around here. sorry. I believe my mum has the actual medals and trophies somewhere (quite possibly in their garage that burned down, unfortunately). There are also pictures of me competing in the Scottish championships somewhere, but they will NEVER see the light of day. Ever.

I could do back somersaults and double front somersaults with twists and everything. If you see the state I am in now, this would take some believing.

I've definitely heard about the Mormon/trampoline connection. It's no lie.

Every kid in our street has one of those stupid round trampolines in a net things

I see where they're going with this, how they don't want to have a bunch of kids with broken necks anymore, but this is one of those new safety guards that make me think the next generation of Americans will be more pussified than the one before.

I love seeing the kids jump on net trampolines. It looks like they're an exhibit in a zoo of kids.

Our neighbour's cat got trapped in their one last night, just scrabbling about in a bouncy manner looking for the gap in the net to get back out. I wish I'd known where the camcorder was.

Random zoom on an eastern Salt Lake City neighboorhood:

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2632/screenshot20101027at414.jpg

Yeah, this is taken from an article about Edinburgh a few years back, and is pretty much like the area I live in:

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/04_01/trampolineMOS0704_468x356.jpg

Hmmm. Lot of Mormons in Edinburgh, I take it.

Growing up, only one of our friends had one, and they were pretty white trash small-town Georgia kids (we all were), so we ended up creating our own version of WWF using the trampoline as the ring. We had a card table lined up with certain kids being the interviewers/hype men/commentators and then everyone had their own name and costume and they'd wrestle on the ring. Really pretty fun, you could pull some amazing moves on that thing...

http://defendingcontending.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/bad-trampoline.jpg

lol

:D

PHIL D, do you live around B3rkley Rd.? i used to live on that street

Yes! I live on B3ndemeer.

:)

Bizarre trampoline games were the BEST. We had this thing where we'd bounce up and down in time to a song we'd heard on the TV test pattern once, not knowing what it was, just sort of wordlessly bouncing in time to this "huh huh huhhhhh" melody.

...turns out it was fuckin "Lorelei" by the Cocteau Twins.

We also used to run the hose over the mat - our original tram had a solid vinyl mat - and put the whole thing on a slight slope, and slide bum-first across the surface and off the edge in a flying leap. How we didn't bust our heads open I have no idea.

Doing all this rotted the stiching of course so dad replaced the mat with a mesh one. So resourceful us took to sticking a sprinkler under the trampoline so the water would shoot up thru the mesh, and bounce up and down with water going everywhere.

Ah, summer.

Tramps and sprinklers = fun in the sun! For sure, Trayce. Good memories, thankfully no broken skulls to report

We had a champaline growing up. Also had three other siblings. Not Mormon though.

No broken skulls, but my lil bro did once snap his front tooth in half (yep, in half, rather than knocking it out) by falling face-first onto the frame. While no one was home looking after us except me.

Pre mobile-phone era. SO much blood.

http://thumbnails.hulu.com/9/21/28079_512x288_manicured__mIfl7BHrgkOg4etCfcfKQw.jpg

neighbourhood girl i kinda knew jumped off tramapoline onto a garden stake, major but survivable injuries.

as an adult i jumped on an old trampoline at gf of the time's parents' house. i went right through the canvas, ending up with remarkably sore legs.

those aerial photos are blowing my mind - i had no idea trampolines were such a thing - in 1980s greater boston maybe like one or two kids had them

Once in gymnastics class I fell between the springs holding the mat to the frame. No injuries, I was just really confused about how I suddenly ended up underneath the thing (I think I was 4). Still, I would've loved to have had a trampoline of my own. Oh, how the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog taunted me as a child:
http://www.bigbearadventures.com/images/jump.jpg

that thing looks fucking amazing

maybe pull it around behind a boat real fast

Oh man I would go nuts on one of those, knowing you cant hurt yourself!

Also, holy shit @ tramapoline stake injury, jesus fuck.

yeah her family moved from the street not long after that

You didnt see this happen at the time did you? God that'dve traumatised me.

I am frankly terrified of trampolines because of that simpsons episode

have never been on one

― dayo, Tuesday, October 26, 2010 9:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

talkin lip 'bout my tramp

You didnt see this happen at the time did you?

no, fortunately. tho it was a trapoline i'd bounced on many a time. it could have been meeee!!

Its funny to think when we were kids no one gave much of a rats arse about injuries - we had a slip n slide people would frequently gouge limbs open on sliding over the metal pegs holding it in place, for example. I bet they dont make em like that anymore and theyre all inflatable or some shit now, right?

Holy fuck I was just joking, but wtf!

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/images/banzai-falls-twin-blast-rapids.jpg

I WANT ONE.

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