As I get older and my aches and pains increase and I start questioning whether I am able to participate in activities with my daughter, I think back to my relatives who were active with kids when they were older than me. Especially, my great-uncle and dad who took the activities to risky extremes.
Santa brought me a pogo stick one year for Christmas. I don’t remember asking him for it, but I always ended my list with “anything else you would like to bring.” In fact, I am fairly sure I did not ask Santa for one after having an extremely hard time learning to ride a bike without training wheels.
My dad loved the pogo stick. It seems he always wanted one when he was young. Hmm…. anyway, he tried to show me how to use it. It had a hefty spring, and I was the very opposite of hefty. I struggled.
One day my great-aunt and great-uncle were visiting my grandmother who lived next door . My father was working with me (again) on the sidewalk near the street. My uncle apparently watched us for while before deciding he could show me how to ride that stick. He was around 70 or so years old then, but he got on the stick and started to bounce.
The result produced this family saying that my cousin and I wrote in his birthday card. (His first name was Alexander.) “Alexander the Great isn’t so great any more. He got on a pogo stick and fell right to the floor.”
The reality was actually very scary at the time it occured. He took a couple of bounces on the sidewalk before turning toward its edge and falling toward the street. His head landing on the curb.
Luckily, he was not seriously hurt. He was especially lucky considering he almost fell into the on coming car.
Several years later, my father would be the one who decided to demonstrate how to do something at his own peril.
When my parent’s moved to the country, they bought my sister a pony to help make the move better for her. The larger pony could be very temperamental.
One day while watching my sister struggle riding the pony, my father said, “Let me show you how it is done.” He then proceeded to get on the pony.
Within moments of getting in the saddle, the pony took off and threw my dad from her back. We saw him hitting the ground one direction and his trifocals falling the other.
It was horror to see this man in his early 60’s falling with such force. It became humor to see that he and his glasses both survived with only minor injuries.
So, other than being over 60 and thinking they could show a kid how to do something, what ties these two rather separate stories together? Well, we would find out much later than neither man had ever done what they were trying to demonstrate. Yes, that’s right, my uncle had never been on a pogo stick and my dad had never been on a pony.
It was kind of out of character for my dad. It turned out not to be so out of character for my uncle. After his death, I found out that even though he had been the one to teach me to ride a bike just a couple of years before the pogo incident, he never learned to ride a bike himself.
