True stories from childhood - Vol. 4, "Trampoline"

Let me shoot strait with you. I'm not a Christmas person. I know that makes me seem evil, but I have good reason. I despise shopping, traffic, crabby attitudes from people who stress themselves out, etc. There.... I have vented.

My Father is not much of a shopper either. In fact, I would have to say that my favorite Christmas as a child revolved around the year he decided not to do any shopping whatsoever. My Dad decided to take us all to the mall, hand us each $100.00, and told us to get what we wanted. Some people might find that unappealing, but my two younger sisters and I loved it. We were given complete freedom to buy all the toys and gadgets that we had stared at for months in eager anticipation of receiving. I was ten, and believe it or not, I still have a lot of the stuff I bought in that shopping spree.

My youngest sister Stephanie thought it would be cool to buy a trampoline with some of her money. She found a very small one that cost about $15. We brought it back to my Dad's house and jumped on that little thing for hours.

Dad's basement had ceiling tiles. Our Stepmother told us to make certain that we didn't hit our heads off the ceiling while we were jumping, not because she was concerned about the ceiling, but because she didn't want us to break our heads. I guess that's reasonable. But when you're ten and an adult tells you not to do something, you immediately find yourself inexplicably tempted to do the very opposite. This was one such moment.

Being a bit of a show off, I said to my sisters, "Hey, watch. I'll hit my head off the ceiling ten times in a row without getting hurt." They watched and counted with me, "One, two, three, four, five..........smash!" I never made it to ten. Right around my sixth jump, my head smashed straight through one of the ceiling tiles. I knew I was in trouble, so I swore my sisters to secrecy and devised a plan that I hoped would work.

I brushed all the ceiling tile dust off my head and walked upstairs to the kitchen. I took a few paper towels and brought them back down with me, along with some scotch tape. I then placed one square over the new hole in the ceiling and taped it in place.

I kid you not, that piece of paper towel stayed taped to their ceiling for about three years, unnoticed. When they finally remodeled that part of the basement and noticed the disguised tile, they blamed it on the previous owners and laughed about it. I have never owned up to that deed, but I confess it here now in hopes of freeing my conscience from its burden of guilt.